THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 18th OF SEPTEMBER 1978 AT HEY FARM, BARNOLDSWICK. THE INFORMANT IS ARTHUR ENTWISTLE, RETIRED ENGINEER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Right we're back on the ball again Arthur. We were talking about groceries and what not last night and if you remember you were saying that you got your groceries at Singletons.
[Barrett’s Directory for 1902 shows Thomas Singleton as grocer of Brook Street.]
R- Yes. Family grocers.
Did your mother ever shop at the Co-op?
R- No not as a regular member of the Co-op, no.
She wasn't a member of the Co-op?
R- She could possibly have popped in and bought some item that, like you do today in a supermarket, that was on offer or something like that, but I don't remember her being a co-op member as such.
Would you say there was any difference between the prices in the little shops on the street corner and the shops in the middle of Barlick?
R – No I wouldn't say there was any marked difference because food in those days was plentiful, what was lacking was money. There wasn't much undercutting as we know today or offers of cheaper goods, five pence off, you understand what I mean. I should say the price of the commodities in the shops, food wise, apart from the difference of the frozen meat and fresh meat, was pretty static.
Yes. Did the shops that your mother used use to give credit?
R- Yes.
Do you think she ever used that?
R- She definitely did, you got your groceries one week and you paid for them the next.
Yes, and how was that worked, what were the actual mechanics of that at the shop?
R - Well the actual mechanics were, if the shop keeper knew you, knew your family, knew you were substantial enough or could be relied on, you had a weeks credit.
Did your mother have a regular book at one shop?
R- Yes she had a regular book at this Singletons.
Yes that's it, because that's why they used to call it the shop book wasn’t it.
R- Yes.
How about pawn shops Arthur?
R- Ah well, there you are. There were a time when the term used to be pop in on Friday and pop back in on Monday, in other words you popped your wedding ring or sometimes your husband’s best suit, brought it out for week-end and it went back in on Monday if you follow what I mean.
(50)
That's it aye. Which were the pawn shop in Barlick?
R- Well, there’s a firm left in Skipton now, Ledgard & Wynn used to be in the middle of Church street where the Magic Eye is now, that was the pawn shop. Not only was it a pawn shop as such, it sold goods. Suits, linoleum, you name it, it was a typical Jewish concern.
Aye. you say Ledgard & Wynn?
[Though confused about Barlick, Arthur was actually right about Ledgard and Wynn’s. Horace Thornton {79/AD/02, page 15.} said that they were originally pawnbrokers in Skipton. I have no evidence as yet of them operating in Barlick.]
R - No I beg your pardon. There was two brothers in the town, there was Isaac and Louis Levi. One brother had a shop on one side of the street and next to the Commercial Inn, is it on the other side of the street, was the other brother. But they both sold furniture and one was a pawn shop, plus selling cheap, very inferior suits, you know what I mean. In other words you pawned your watch and you get a suit and you got fleeced both ends of the stick. You get what I mean, they were shoddy goods.
(5 mins)
R- I think they had a term for it in America, the company store which, well it's hardly relevant to this conversation but it was prevalent in this county a hundred and forty years ago. You worked for a firm and the firm paid you in their money and there's still some of that money knocking about in Dudley and round there.
Aye that's it, bucket shops.
R- That's right.
Aye, Can you remember if pawn shops did good business then?
R- Definitely, they definitely did good business.
Yes. Did your mother use them?
R- Infrequently if times were bad enough or there was a domestic crisis, sickness, if your husband hadn't a wage. I mean to say there wasn't the social security, you popped your wedding ring or anything in other words to raise a bit of money until times brightened up a bit.
Yes. Was there anything that you ate then when you were young that you can't get now? Can you think of anything that you used to eat then that you can't get now?
R - Well the commonest commodity that we ate in those days was probably what I call, even with the bakers, home baked bread which of course the combines have ruined today. Food in general, lots of it, you could get more than you can get today. Particularly in rice and cereals and things like that because today the eastern countries, it’s their main diet and there isn't as much of that sort of stuff coming into the country. There were split peas, fine peas and black peas, well you can't buy black peas today, not to my knowledge anyway.
Yes. Would you say food was short during the first world war?
R - Definitely it was short during the first world war. Not only was it short, the first few weeks, or the first few months of the war, before the Government got organised, in our family my father volunteered I think it was the second day of the war, and free flour, sugar. tea and the barest necessities of life, life which you can make your own bread and so on, were distributed in I think it's the Commercial Yard. You know when you get to the bottom of Manchester Road there's a boutique shop, then there's a pub yard.
The Seven Stars.
R- Seven Stars. Well in the Seven Stars yard. Soldier's wives who hadn't got their pay book could go there if they had definite proof their husband was in the army. I can remember the chap who was in charge was up that flight of steps, standing above the crowd, then you had a ticket given which entitled you to a certain amount of flour, sugar, according to the number in the family which in that day there was three of us, me and my sister and mother. And that was of course in [force] until the regular pay cheques became fluent through the war ministry getting organised shall we say. Food was scarce, you were at the mercy of every tradesman. Saturday morning the Maypole, margarine shop at the bottom of Frank Street, used to open from eleven o'clock till twelve and you stood in a queue probably from nine o'clock till the shop doors opened and according to the speed and efficiency of the assistants in the shop, which they treated you like dirt, you understand what I mean, because you were subject to their whim. ‘Well I’ll serve you if I want to serve you.’ you know. If you haven't got the right money, go and get the right money. You had to have the right money in your hand for what you was buying. And that also was when the coupons, the food coupons were issued. You had to take your food coupons to cover the amount of margarine you could buy. But as I said, the shops only opened, some shops only opened for a limited time.
(150) 10 mins)
Was it common to see queues at the shops?
R - Oh good lord yes. It was as common to see queues in the 14/18 war as it was to see it in this last war.
Did you think that on the whole the family was better fed during the first world war than before?
R- Er no, I wouldn’t think so if I can remember rightly even though when things got on a level keel, when I say a level keel, mother was drawing the army pay regular, she was also working. Food was scarce, but what we did get was good, what we did have was good honest food but it was no more plentiful than it was before the war.
That's it aye. Now then clothing. You've always been a natty dresser Arthur, did your mother make any of the family’s clothes?
R - When we were children yes. Of course at that time ours was a relatively small family but very often you'd have a pair of pants made out of some of your dad's old uns. And in families where there was at least six children, it was a case of hand me down from one to the other until they was absolutely thoroughly worn out.
Did she have a sewing machine?
R- Sewing machine, I can't remember my mother ever having a sewing machine, it was all hand stitched.
Did she mend the clothes?
R - Oh yes definitely.
And did you ever have any passed on clothes?
R - Patched?
Passed on, hand me downs?
R- Very occasionally.
Yes of course, with you being the eldest they'd have to be from somebody else's family.
R - It ud be out of some other member of the family like an uncle, older cousin for instance.
Yes. If your clothes were, you know, if your mother ever bought you any clothes, where did she buy them from Arthur?
R- Well in that day it was prevalent to run a system was in existence called clothing clubs. You’d have a fella called on a Friday night which was, I think I mentioned earlier, Friday night was pay night for all the little debt-collectors to come and collect the money whatever it may be, and the clothing club was one of them. And you paid your weekly payments of money and when you'd saved so much you got your clothing club check which there were certain shops accepted them. Sometimes we had to go to Earby, sometimes we had to go to Colne depending on the type of commodity one wanted. And there was always a suspicion in the minds of the working people of that day, that because it was a clothing club check, and yet it was ready money, they foisted on to you if they could inferior goods at the top price. So when you went to buy with a clothing club check it was the custom to pick whatever you wanted, try it on and say we'll have that and then smartly whip the check across. And this brought a very queer expression on the shop-keeper’s face, it was a case of being outsmarted. But later on after the war, I'm running over a little bit, they became what they called the Scotchmen. In other words tailors came from Nelson and Burnley, Colne.
(200)
Narthen that's interesting, I've heard that before now. I was told that before, that the Scotchmen was just a slang term for the bloke that was collecting for the Provident or whoever it were.
R - It was a different firm entirely to the Provident. It would be quite a legitimate business but there would be a big shop say in Burnley and the Scotchmen so called, I don’t know how the term arose or why, he’d come and measure you at home for your suit and next week he’d bring the suit or coat or whatever it were that you’d ordered. And of course he came and collected his weekly payment.
Yes, and that wasn't like a Provident check, that was the actual firm that was selling the stuff.
R- No. That was actually cash.
Aye, like cash to the tailor style of thing.
(15 mins)
R - It could bring, well I, up to getting married, I had suits, overcoats, shoes from the Scotchmen.
Were they decent, were they alreight?
R- Yes quite, if you didn’t like the quality of the thing, if you didn't like it, we'll say an overcoat for instance, you didn't like the cut of it, you'd just say well I don't like that bring me another next week.
Oh, that's not so bad. And what happened to your old clothes Arthur?
R- Well narthen. This is a very difficult question to answer because I was very small in stature even at fourteen and it was the custom for schoolboys in those days to wear short trousers and they didn't go into long pants until you was about fifteen, sixteen. In other words when you reached the pubic age and with being small, [laughs] it was only when I played for my first dance that I had long trousers. And that was a case of father going out to the pawn shop to get a cheap suit for me to go and play in.
And what happened to your old clothes?
R- Well, in some cases they were passed on to cousins, there was a gap, a gap so big between my brother’s ages and ours that my clothes were virtually no good to them at all.
(250)
Aye that's it.
R – So, well, shirts, vests, underpants were an unknown bloody thing. [laughs] Pardon my swearing, the luxury of a pair of underpants was an unknown thing in those days. If you had a shirt and a vest, flannel shirt at that, you know for working in, going to work, and a pair of trousers and a waistcoat you was alreight.
Aye, What did you wear for school Arthur?
R- Wear for school. Well they invariably wore the jersey, shirt, we didn't have any school ties in those days, short trousers, long black stockings, we more often than not had holes in the heels, we used to put boot polish on the white part so it couldn't be detected. And, well it's a cap that’s almost gone out of existence, but at one date we used to call it a cricket cap. It's a cap that fit fairly snug on your head, well cricketers wore them, and a little neb at the front and a little button on the top.
Yes. Aye, that's it.
R- Some schools still use ‘em today as a matter of fact. I went to work with one on..
Aye school cap. Yes. Oh I've worn them, lost many a one off the top of the tram. What kind of footwear did you wear when you went to school.
R- Clogs.
Clogs. Irons?
R - Irons yes.
Where did you get your clogs generally?
R - Well, in the middle of Jepp Hill was a cloggers shop and that happened to be the nearest to where we lived. [Bob Hartley]
What was his name?
R- I can’t remember his name but there was another clogger in the town down by where the bridge goes over the Butts Beck by the Salvation Army. [Dam Head]
Yes.
R- There was a wood hut there, a clogger’s shop, clogger Marsh.
Yes. That fella near Jepp Till was his name Holmes? [I was wrong here, Holmes owned the pie and pea shop on Lamb Hill at that time.] It could have been, I couldn't swear.
Aye. It wasn't the Co-op clog shop was it?
R- Oh no, it was a private business.
Aye that's it, ‘cause the Co-op clog shop, where were the Co-op clog shop, they had one?
R- Co-op clog shop, I’ve got an idea, I may be wrong don't take
this as (Pause)
What did your mother wear in the house, you know, for housework?
(300) (20 mins)
R - Well the everyday dress was a blouse, long skirt, cotton stockings, underwear I don't know naturally and an apron.
When you say long skirt do you mean long skirt down to floor?
R- Practically to the floor. And invariably had an apron which was a brat they called them.
That's it, a brat yes.
R - Tied round her waist.
Yes. Was it a proper apron or was it a fent?
R- Well some penile would, some people who worked in the factory did, you called 'em fents, but they didn't call 'em fents at home because that admitted they'd pinched it.
Aye.
R - They'd use their brat they'd put their brat on.
Yes that’s it aye but it wasn't like a made up pinafore.
R- Oh it wasn't a bought or manufactured article.
That's it aye. If she went out would she keep it on?
R- If she was going to the corner shop, the custom was, she used to pick one corner up of the brat and tuck it into the waistband so as she’d got half an apron on in a diagonal. Which was a peculiar attitude of mind I used to think, why tuck it into the top of the apron to say, see, like I've got a nice skirt on, you understand what I mean.
Aye. but I like that. That's first time anybody's mentioned that. I can understand that. It just showed they weren’t working at the time didn't it, you know it showed they were having ten minutes off.
R- Yes, that’s it.
Aye, that's it. You never know it might have been a sign that they were ready for a bit of a gossip. So if she vent down to corner shop she'd just tuck one corner of her pinny in and..
R- Into her waistband and away she'd go.
She wouldn't bother to put her hat on, or would she just chuck her shawl on her head?
R - Invariably have a short shawl and put that round her head if the weather was bad enough, if the weather was alright she'd just go as she was.
Yes that's it.
R - Oh 1 might just mention one thing while we're on about aprons. Sometimes, if she went to the corner shop and bought more commodities than she'd gone for, it was a common thing to carry them in the apron back home because she hadn’t gone out with a basket you see. Just the odd times.
Yes. They still do, they still do that in the mill.
R - Do they?
Yes. In fact I’ll tell you who does that regular. The little lad in mill that looks after the lavatories, [Colin Macro] when he comes down for the toilet rolls, because I'm IC [army term for ‘in charge’]toilet rolls as they are a valuable commodity. I always give him eight at once and he always wears a brat and all he does is just hold two corners out and I throw eight toilet rolls in and off he goes.
(350)
R - That's it yes.
Exactly same thing. Did your father mend the families shoes, clogs, clogs or shoes?
R- Not very often, occasionally. Not everybody was proficient enough to do it. I remember me dad having a last, he’d put a clog iron on, you could go and buy clog irons and nails and you could buy patches of leather as a matter of fact. I never wore shoes even on Sunday until I was about fifteen. Because the custom was, up to the 1920's was, even with the men, you'd have a pair of brown leather clogs with brass nails for Sunday and your ordinary black leather clogs and plain tin tack nails, ordinary clogs for weekdays. So when you went out at Sunday with a pair of brown clogs on with brass nails you were literally dressed up. Shoes didn't become common, well, I should say getting on to 1927. The first time I ever wore shoes as I said, I must have been about fifteen or sixteen.
How many outfits did you have at any one time?
R- How many outfits?
Yes.
R- Clothing you mean?
Yes.
R- Well, I’d have one best suit so called and the working clothes. If you had two pair of trousers for work you were lucky. Well one pair were washed. You know what 1 mean because as I said, underpants were relatively unknown amongst the male [population] Well as far as I know and as far as I'm concerned. I don't know and I can't remember 'em being sold in the shops as such for men. And women wore, because I can remember going and getting 'em for an auntie of mine, they didn't wear bloomers as we know them today, they wore drawers. They were like two split legs and all they did when they went to the toilet, they sat down and pulled it apart and they were in business. [laughs]
(400) (25 mins)
Interesting, and they think they've invented something with open crotch knickers! Oh well, there you are Arthur it just goes to show there's nothing new under the sun. Right, [laughs] it says here were any of your clothes made for you by a dressmaker. That is evidently not intended for you Arthur.
R- Not until I got in a position where I was earning enough money. Where I could go and have a suit made to measure.
I said a dressmaker!
R- Oh a dressmaker! No it doesn’t apply to me, no.
Would you say there was a difference between the way your father dressed and say his foreman. Well he didn't actually have a foreman here but say somebody at the mill that was in charge of him, you know, when he was working at the mill? Would, you say there was a definite difference in the way those people dressed. Would it be possible to tell a man’s station in life by the way he was dressed?
R- Well I can only quote actually to my knowledge, and it only occurred in the engineering, which there was very little in Barnoldswick. There was Brown and Pickles, I can always remember the foreman going to work who worked there and he wore a green bowler. When I say green, it was green with age, and that bowler hat was his badge of office.
Who was that?
R- I forget his name, he was an oldish fella, I can see him now walking down Wellhouse Road, he walked a bit like a penguin but he was foreman down at Brown and Pickles, millwrights and engineers. I can still remember this bloody mouldy green hat! And he never took it off from going into the works to coming out. [I think this will be Henry Brown who went in with Johnny Pickles in the early 1930s.]
Aye.
Would you say that clothes changed after the first world war?
R- Well they changed slightly, nothing really dramatic until you got into the late twenties. And then, into the late twenties we started to be influenced by, as we are today, the American film industry and fads that were sort of imported from America. For instance, Oxford bags which I wore in my youth was an importation but as I say that was the late twenties, twenty eight. If you'd enough money of course to indulge in such a luxury. In other words, I won't say we were the, what they call 'em, the Bovver Boys type 'cause we was always elegantly dressed even though the fashion might be a bit bizarre. And it was quite common for a young man, his Sunday best would be a blue serge suit, a shirt, stiff collar, a wing collar and very often a bow tie or a black tie, like a cravat. And one always wore a bowler hat and had a swaggering stick which was a walking stick with a silver head, something similar to the one I have downstairs now, and that was the well dressed youth of the thirties, early thirties. So fashions did change but apart from the Oxford bags there's nothing sticks firmly in my mind. You was dressed decently and tidy and that was the lot.
Bit of a change from clothes now Arthur, a bit more about the family. Were your parents at all strict about your behaviour at the table?
R - Oh definitely, most definitely.
In what way?
R- You wasn't allowed to go to the table until the meal was ready and you was told to go and take your place, and you each had your allotted place at the table, and as 1 said earlier on, your place was stood at one side of the table and the others at the other side, not at the corner.
There's just one little interruption there Arthur, I'm sorry. When you say you were stood at the table, would you say you were stood at the table because there was no where to sit or was there another reason?
(500) (30 mins)
R- You wasn't allowed to sit at the table.
So in other words, even it there’d been a chair there, your dad wouldn’t have let you sit at the table?
R- No, under no circumstances was you allowed to sit down.
Yes, and have you any idea what the reason for that was?
R- Well, the origin of that was semi-military, slightly Teutonic, and a code of the area to let you know that your place in the house was such and such a place and you couldn't get away from that. The eldest of the family, even though my father was far from being a religious man, the eldest of the family before bread was broken had to say grace which unfortunately became my lot. Even though my father wasn’t a religious man but he must have had an upbringing parallel with it because all our family were military people and as you know when I say Teutonic, on the continent at that period of time they had large families and the families marched in into their allotted place round the table and stood there till the father said grace and then they set to and had the meal, they wasn't allowed to speak at the table.
You weren’t?
R - None of the children was allowed to speak at the table because, I quote this as a little bit of ironic humour on my fathers part. We’ll say that we’d had a dinner and we’d been lucky enough to have a sweet cake each to finish off with or an extra pudding or something like that. The old man used to say “Them as asks for some can't have any and them that doesn’t ask doesn’t want any.” Which in the juvenile mind was a bloody puzzling paradox if you get what I mean. An ironic sense of humour.
Yes. And were your parents strict about anything else, like times for coming in or being cheeky or swearing?
R- Oh yes definitely. You wasn't allowed to use any language, well one never thought about it as a matter of fact.
Did your father swear?
R- Oh violently, he was a foul mouthed person.
In the house?
R- Well bloodying and blasting, damnation and all that. I don't swear, the usual jargon, four letter words. Oh no they didn't go to those extremes but he swore quite frequently and as I say literally give you a bloody good blasting.
Yes and you hadn't to swear.
R- No you wasn't allowed.
If you did do something wrong how did you get punished?
R- Well usually a back hander across the ears, and if you'd done something really naughty he didn't finish with one good smack you had a bloody good belting, you know what 1 mean. I had a very rough bringing up. Father was a very exceptionally violent man and he’s pummelled me like a punch ball and I know on one occasion he sent me on an errand and like lads do sometimes, you'd been on one or two errands, so I sort of pulled a face as I were turning away. He called me back and he gave me a good thumping and in his temper he started to strangle me, well I went unconscious. That was in the middle of summer and I had to go to work with a muffler round my neck in the middle of summer to hide the thumb marks. But my father, exceptionally, well I should say he was slightly unbalanced in that respect, he carried discipline too far.
Yes. Yes it sounds so Arthur. If you had a birthday was it different from any other day?
R- No.
Did you ever have prayers at home, you know, apart from grace?
R- No.
(600) (35 mins)
No. How did your family spend Christmas day?
R- Well there was always something rustled up for Christmas Day dinner. I did repeat earlier, the one fad father had, black pudding, and everybody had black pudding only for breakfast. Christmas dinner as 1 said could be a couple of fowl or a good big duck or a big fat hen. Geese, I don’t ever remember having goose and 1 don't remember having turkey until I was married.
How about any drink about at Christmas, in the house I mean?
R – No, not in the house.
Not in the house, no. Can you remember anything special at Easter you know, was there any celebrations at Easter?
R- Well Easter, there was more went on I should think that caught the imagination at Easter because Easter we’ve always associated with eggs for some particular reason. And very often eggs were dyed and some skilful people could even put photographs on the eggs of the locks. [Greenberfield locks] Which was you know, quite an achievement. And then of course there was what they called Pace Egg Sunday. Now whether I'm confusing Pace Egg Sunday and Easter Sunday..
No. I’ll tell you sommat now. This question on this sheet, and this is Elizabeth’s sheet, Elizabeth Roberts. How did the family spend the Easter holidays, did you have pace eggs?
(650)
R - Yes. You went out into the country, in our case you could have gone up Brown Hill or you could have gone on the Weets or some people further afield would go up Pendle Hill. And at a given time you all took your eggs, they were hard boiled eggs. Incidentally, some were dyed pink and if you rubbed a candle over the egg and made a mark through the candle wax with a sharp pointed article and boiled it and used a dye, your name came out clear on your own individual egg. And pace egging was of course rolling the egg down the hill and the one who's egg survived at the bottom of the hill, there was some small prize. And the usual church, Sunday School tea-urn and a few buns, you know, hot-cross buns and that sort of thing. These were organised of course by the Sunday School. But with being a Spring Festival as one might term it, a fertility festival, there was more going on at Easter than you did have at Christmas. After your Christmas dinner that was it, there was nothing further.
Narthen this is going to get you going Arthur! Did you have any musical instruments In the house?
R- Well, yes we did have. The first musical instrument, if I can call it a musical instrument, was a polyphone.
Yes go on, you tell me what a polyphone is.
R - Well it was a very elaborate form of a musical box, much larger than normal and you could put steel records on it. Some of the records were eighteen inches in diameter and of course it had pins in certain places in the record and as it moved along it struck pins which
(700)
struck the reed and you had music. When I say we had one, we only had one by virtue of the fact that my father at the particular time I'm speaking of, again it was just post-war, did a lot of trucking and trading as it were called. You know what I mean. Buying up, anybody that had anything to sell that were hard up. Same as a mangle, it's amazing what would be sold and with having a well equipped workshop he used to put new wood rollers in, paint 'em up and Saturday morning was a sales day. But anyway that was the only manual musical instrument.
(40 mins)
There's just one little thing about that, you've just mentioned something there. I know we're on musical instruments but I’m just going to take you back a little bit because it dawned on me today when I was doing the sheet for last nights tape that really I missed a bit of a goody. I take it that there wouldn't be many people in Barlick, even at that time, with a gas engine in the parlour.
R - With what?
A gas engine in the parlour.
R- Ah, well. When I say, well it wasn't a parlour as such, the room was intended to be a parlour.
Well that’s what I mean, what would normally have been a parlour and mean, in the Entwistle household..
R - It was a workshop.
It had a gas engine in it.
R - To drive a lathe and..
Yes, I think you'd better tell me a bit more about that Arthur. I’m beginning to warm to your father in some ways. I mean a gas engine in the parlour and slaughtering goats in the bath, he sounds like my sort of a bloke. [laughs]
R – Alreight, well I'll take it back just post-war..
(750)
R- When he was working on the railway, with being in the goods yard he got to know certain tradesmen and he got in pretty well with the Maypole dairy manager. And the margarine came in wooden boxes and that was the foundation of my father starting a wooden toy manufacturing business in his spare time and he did remarkably well with it. So well in fact, that Doctor Glen, he's long deceased, wanted to put money into it. He could see the possibilities because in those days there was no pressed toys coming from Germany or Japan. Practically all children’s toys were made of wood, even down to Dutch dolls in many cases, and painted. Well, my job was in this triangular room which became a workshop for the enterprise with a bench, a gas engine and a lathe, wood turning of course.
How big was the gas engine Arthur? I'm sorry.
R - Oh I should say, well relative horse power 1 should say one horse power. It wasn't very large but it was big enough to do the job.
Aye it ud be about the size of one of them, like that little Lister one and half horse I have in there.
R - That's right, thereabouts that size.
About that size, aye. Water cooled?
R - Oh yes water cooled and we used to bury the silencer box underground. Because he reckoned it made it more efficient. All you could hear were a ..put..put,,put.
Aye.
R - You didn't hear the explosion. You could only hear the exhaust of the gas.
Would you say that the neighbours were inconvenienced by the gas engine running?
(800)
R - Well as I mentioned previously they were back to back houses. And when father put this gas engine in he went round to his immediate opposite neighbour that would be affected by the sound to see if they had any objection and to listen for themselves as to what the extent of the noise was. And through the wall it sounded no more than what a sewing machine would. There wouldn't have been no more noise than a sewing machine would make in your own house if you follow what I mean.
Yes right Arthur, now back to the toys.
R- Well my job was to knock the margarine boxes to pieces. Carefully. Draw all the nails out of them and stack them in their proportionate sizes until of course they were required. And where the Maypole was stamped on the box father used to plane that off and we’d new wood to start with. Of course round about, just before Christmas was a very busy time. He got orders in from shops in the town, model aeroplanes, trains, wagons. It developed on to scooters, which you don't see today and scooters in those days were made purely of wood with a metal bracket, hinged bracket. My father went one better he had castings made and he put castings on his for the swivel. Not only that, he made them the Rolls Royce of scooters because he had them where you could put rubber tyres on, like on the pram wheels. I don't know how it was done even today but the foundry was the Boundary Foundry at Colne and there was a special pattern made that the wheels were cast from with a ‘V’ in it so that they required no more machining than drilling a hole through the centre of the boss and the rubber tyres putting on. Well you used to buy a tyre in lengths and it like had a spiral wire down the middle. Are you with me?
(45 mins) (850)
That's it yes, pram tyres are the same now.
R - You cut it, well like the pram tyre, you cut it into the length and then you twisted it back so that when you let go it screwed itself one into the other. Locked it and kept the tyre on the wheel. Well he did exceptionally well and were doing reasonably well financially but he was a fella that wasn't a business man and he had a lot of friends when he had a lot of money. And of course he was pretty free handed when he was in the pub and of course when the inevitable reckoning of the bills came in, sometimes he couldn't pay. More often than not. So eventually he declined. At one time he had five people working for him on that irrespective of me.
(900)
Yes. Now when you say he had five people working for him, obviously that wasn't in the parlour at St. James Square?
R - No. I'll tell you where that was, he graduated from there when he was doing the toy making. The building’s gone now, but the top of Wapping there used to be a Spiritualist Hall and a little narrow road, and the other side of the road was a red brick building which as 1 said, he’d got to the stage where he had a couple of lathes, a couple of circular saws and benches and what have you, drilling machine. You know to get on and more room to store the materials and toys. You've got to have room if you're making a number of toys. He had a chap painting ‘em and they had to be stored somewhere until they were delivered. And then from there, when the toy business became exhausted, he set up again. And at the bottom of Wapping on what we call Town Bridge when you're going to work in the morning if you go that way there's a little yard and what was a window in front of it and there’s a red wooden boarded up. [Where the bicycle shop is in 2003]
Yes.
R - And also in the same yard, which is lower down than the road quite a bit, he had all those premises there under those houses. That was a workshop and that was when he had the five people working for him. And round the back where the butchers shop is on the other side of the road was a barn. And we had part of the barn in there with a couple of very large lathes in. Well he went in partnership with a fella and he used to buy same as anybody died and they wanted an attic clearing, which is a business today..
Who was it he went in partnership with?
R- It was a fella called Smith. Actually he was the local bandmaster.
What was his full name?
R- Joseph Smith. There were four brothers of them, one was a photographer. He had a shop up top of Wapping nearly opposite Clough Mill gates only on the other side.
Aye that's it yes, that studio there, they've just made it into a garage for the house.
R- That's it. Well, we had our wedding photographs taken there. That was another Smith. The other two Smiths Hugh and Albert were tacklers and then eventually they branched out and they rented Bracewell Hall and they opened it up as a Country Club. but anyway that’s digressing from the task in hand.
Yes because I want to know a bit about Bracewell Hall when we get round to it. Anyway, we'll call that a do for that tape Arthur.
(1004)
SCG/08 May 2003
6,889 words.