THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 1st OF NOVEMBER 1978 AT THE HOUSE OF THE INFORMANT ON LINKS ROAD, ST ANNES ON SEA. THE INFORMANT IS GEORGE FORRESTER SINGLETON, RETIRED SENIOR PARTNER IN THE FIRM OF G F SINGLETON AND COMPANY, ESTATE AGENTS, OF BLACKBURN. THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
When I revisited this transcript after an interval of 25 years I was surprised by the amount of talking I had done during the interview. On reading it through I realised why but this might not be immediately obvious to the researcher in the future. I was very nervous and intimidated by the fact that I was interviewing a very formidable and precise man. He didn’t know me and what I was doing was establishing my credentials with him. As far as he was concerned I was the soon-to-be redundant engineer from Bancroft Shed and rightly or wrongly I felt I had to establish myself in his mind as someone who had seriously addresses the matters we were talking about. So I apologise for the amount of SG but ask for understanding. Effective interviewing depends largely on empathy and I’ll admit that I might have over-egged the pudding here.
Now then Mr Singleton, what's your full name?
R - George Forrester Singleton.
That’s a fine name. Is it a family name, Forrester?
R – Yes. It was my mother's maiden name.
And what year were you born?
R - 1889.
1889?
R - November 39th,
November 39th, 1889. That’s the same year that the Calf Hall Shed Company were formed in Barlick and you have lasted longer than them! What was your father's name?
R - Robert Thompson Singleton.
And where was he born?
R - In Darwen.
In Darwen. And what was his job?
R- Textile machinery merchant and Mill Furnisher.
Aye. Did he have anything to do with India Mill do you know?
No, but his father did.
So what was his father's job, your grandfather?
(100)
R- His father, that's my grandfather was Thomas Singleton who was born in 1830 and was brought up in the cotton trade in various capacities and he was of an inventive turn of mind.
Was that in Darwen as well?
R- In Darwen yes. And the mill, India Mill was built I think 1864 to 1868 and there was an exhibition there when they opened it. And he had a patent on view on that occasion. Now I shouldn't have known but I was making the valuation of a mill at Radcliffe many years ago, and the proprietor said to me are you related to Thomas Singleton? I said yes and so he told me that he remembered the exhibition and that my grandfather had exhibited one of his patents there. So now then, where do you want me to go from here?
Oh you are right. Your mother, what was her full name?
(5 min)
R- Emma Forrester.
Do you know where was she born?
R – Manchester.
(150)
Do you know whereabouts in Manchester?
R- Lower Broughton.
Aye. And what year was she born? Have you any idea? Roughly?
R- 1859.
1859. Aye, that’d. be a busy place then, Lower Broughton in Manchester in 1859. And how did she come to meet your father?
R- Well, her father was an engineer and trained at W&C Mather’s of Manchester.
Would that be the original firm of Mather’s & Platt?
(200)
R- Yes. And he married the eldest daughter of one John Sedgwick who was a master tailor in Lower Broughton and his wife died of consumption about four or five years after their marriage and she left three children, the eldest was my mother and she was brought up by her grandparents. She had an aunt who was eight years older than
her and she was one of the first scholars at Westminster College in London which was a training college for teachers set up following the Education Act of 1870. Her father died and her course was shortened and she took an appointment at Hapton at Hapton
Wesleyan Day School which was associated with the Sunday School. She
was there several years and she got the appointment of the Head of the Infant School at Darwen School. So she came to Darwen with her niece, my mother, and also her mother and so they [George’s father and mother] were both members of Railway Road Wesleyan Methodist Church and got to know each other that way.
(10 min)
That's it, yes. Now when your mother came to Darwen, you say she was eight years younger than her aunt, she'd be, what age would she be then? Have you any idea?
R- 22 or 23 I think.
(250)
Yes. And what age was she when she married your father?
R- 29.
29. Yes, Which were slightly late to be marrying even then, wouldn’t it, but not a lot.
R- Not a lot
And how many children were there in your family? Did you have any brothers and sisters?
R- Yes. There were six. Four boys and two girls.
Yes. And was that six confinements or did some not survive?
R- No. they all survived,
So there were six confinements and six children, do you understand what I mean?
R- Yes I do.
You know, some people in those days, I mean there was one case I recorded recently, eleven confinements and three children.
R- Yes, quite.
Because, 1 mean things were really bad. Andy and whereabouts did you come in the family Mr Singleton?
R- The eldest.
You were the eldest, you were the first born. And what were the names of your brothers and sisters, which order did they come in?
R- Well, do you want the names in detail?
Yes please.
R - Well the next one’s Emily Hilda, another sister Elizabeth Marion, then a brother Fletcher Norman, another brother Robert Allan and the last Carl Sedgwick. And each one had a family name, a family Christian name.
(300)
Yes, they are some fine names, they are. People had a lot more imagination in the names then than they have now. That's something, that comes out in these tapes quite a lot. People seemed to use their imagination a lot more in naming the children in those days than they do now. And so your father's married your mother and he is working in Darwen as Mill Furnisher. Now then you were born in 1889 ...
R- Yes.
So you’d be going to school until you were what age?
R- Going where?
To school, what age were you when you started half time, did you start half time?
R- No I didn’t no. What happened was this, that ten years after I was born or nine and a half years, my father and mother decided to remove to the coast on the advice of the doctor because my mother’s health was not good at the time. And we came to live in St Annes which was then only a small village, 1899. Andy oh, I should have said, before leaving Darwen I attended Hiss Hick's School, by this time she had a private school and she died in 1898. Then I went to [what was then] then Darwen Higher Grade School which had been formed two years before and now it’s the Darwen Grammar School. And I was there about just over
(350)
twelve months and then we moved to St Annes.
What year did you come to St Annes Mr Singleton?
R- 1899. And I attended Kildrummel School as it was then. But at that time there were seven or eight boy’s schools and three girl’s schools because St Annes was considered to be a very desirable place from a health point of view. And then because of industrial development more attention was given to education than had been in the generation previously. Andy then I left school at 16 and got a post as an office boy at the Park Place Spinning Company Limited, Blackburn.
(15 min)
At that time, to be at school, in education until you were 16, it would be quite exceptional wouldn’t it? You understand what I mean, most people left school…
R- At 14.
So I mean, when I say exceptional, let’s put it this way, that for every hundred boys of your age in Lancashire you found, that probably you are the only one that would exceed the statutory age for education. You were one of the, favoured ones in some ways.
R – Yes. I think there was a larger proportion than one per cent but you see my parents put some store on education, having been in the education world.
That's it, yes.
(400)
R- And naturally they wanted the children to receive the best education. And 16 was considered the appropriate time to leave fort the professions and industry.
Nowt what would you say, looking back what would you say your parents had in mind for you as a career? Would you say that they had any definite views in their minds as to what would be a suitable career for you when you left school at 16?
R- Well I would say to enter the cotton trade which was then the trade which provided most opportunities for boys. You see, the cotton trade, or its development in Lancashire is something of a romance and at that time the belief in the cotton trade was that it was, it would go on and on and develop and expand every ten years or so. And everybody expected that it would have developed and continued. It only got a shock in the 1914 war which was the watershed.
Yes. Because of course, the period we are speaking. About when you left school, at that time cotton exports were 45% of the total exports of the country, weren't they?
R- That’s right, I left school in 1906.
Yes. That's it aye. Yes well that were just about, you were just coming up to the peak then weren't they? Of the India export, all the rest of it, and they thought it was going to last for ever.
(450)
R- That's true, that was the general opinion because it had, in spite of all it’s set backs, periodical set backs, it seemed to come up and expand again. Up and expanded you see? Until 1914.
Yes, but I meant look there, even after the Great War, 1919 to 1920 was the biggest boom textiles ever had. I meant you know yourself that there were firms in Oldham and Bolton paying dividends of 45% and if you look in Oldham and Bolton, round the spinning mills there, there were a lot of big mills, really big mills, 100,000 spindle mills built and commissioned in l920 and 1921 just as the trade cracked.
R- No, no. Now I can tell you with, there were a few but there were not many built after 1919. One or two in Bolton, there was one at Royton.
Elk.
R- The Elk in 1926 and we do their work.
Yes. Oh, what was that fellow's name? They all said he were crackers. When everybody else was shutting down he was building mills. Colonel, not Bradshaw. Earnshaw? [Tommy E Gartside actually. Elk Mill at Royton was commenced in 1926 and completed in 1927. Holding 107, 240 mule spindles it cost approximately £250,000 and was the last mule spinning mill to be built in Lancashire. The locals called it ‘Tommy’s Folly’. {source: The Shiloh Story. 1974.]
R- Oh dear! Yes, you are quite right. He was a great man, and I knew him, I knew him.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. [See original transcript for long SG speech which is nothing to do with the Singleton evidence! SG and George Singleton get into a conversation about dog shit and the tanning industry….]
So you moved, the family moved across to Blackburn.
R- Yes.
Now what year was that Mr Singleton?
R- 1906.
1906. You'd left school. Yes, so you didn't go to school in Blackburn. So, obviously when you got there you'd be looking out for a job, or your father’d be looking out for a job. That’s it, yes.
R- I have got a job to go to. And I started and I travelled for about a couple of months before we moved. I got this job in the Park Place Spinning Company as 1 said, as an office boy at five shillings a week. Now, five shillings a week was the standard rate, but it was related to what was an ordinary wage in textiles.
(600)
The ordinary wage would be from a pound to 25 shillings. There were some foremen who got 30 shillings but 25 shillings was considered a living wage in 1906 and so your five shillings was roughly a quarter or a fifth you see. And then you’d build up. You got a rise of a shilling a year for about five years.
Now then, one point in particular there. I have been trying to find this out for a terribly long time and I've not found anybody who can tell me. I think you might be able to clear something up for me. Now, your duties as an office boy, would it
include copying letters?
(25 min)
R- Yes.
When we talk about copying letters, can you tell me how you copied letters in those days?
R- We had what was known as a letter book composed of fine, I’ll call it tissue paper. Well it was stronger than tissue but it was fine paper.
Yes, I know what you mean.
R- The letter vas handwritten in a special kind of ink, copying ink.
Now, I must just interrupt you there. Was that ink used in a pen or was it used in the form of a pencil?
R- Pen.
Pen, yes. And did you write on the tissue?
R - No we wrote on the ordinary letter.
Yes, now, that book, was it made up of one leaf of tissue and one leaf of letter.
R- No. Those were a later introduction. Yes, and there may have been six letters to go out that night you see? So these six letters would be put in a blank leaf in the letter copying book you see? The page would be wet.
The tissue?
R- The tissue would be wet and then there’d have been a hard piece of material. I forget what, what it's like.
(650)
Compressed cardboard or ebonite?
R- Well no, it wasn’t cardboard, it was something that wouldn’t absorb water. But anyway it wasn’t metal but it was like a sheet of tin or that construction, but it was some composition.
Yes like ebonite or something like that, yes.
R- Yes, it was before ebonite was really, ebonite was of later origin. Then we took this book with these six letters interleaved and put it under a copying press. You screwed the top you see? And then after a pause, about a minute, you returned it you see? And then you took the book out, took the pages out and put them on the table to dry before putting back, the original letter was wet by this time you see. And then you put it in an envelope for postage. That was my job.
Yes, that's it. This is something I've been trying to get hold of for a bit and even printers couldn’t tell me this. Now then, after that they brought out a new thing didn't they? They brought out a book which was essentially a book of two leaves, there was a leaf of tissue, and then a leaf of ordinary paper. A leaf of tissue, a leaf of ordinary paper.
R- Yes, interleaved.
That’s it. Now can you explain to me how that was used for writing. letters?
R- Yes. There was a piece of carbon put in between and the carbon was one sided, loose, and the other side had not been treated. So that the not been treated side was on the top you see so that you had the copy. The original was the top copy which you wrote with a pointed pencil. You see? A pen wasn't strong enough to get it through. That's where your pencil comes.
Yes. Now just one thing, which one did you write on, the tissue or the paper?
R- You wrote on the paper.
You wrote on the paper. Yes.
R- And the carbon coloured side was on the tissue and as you wrote it copied on to the tissues
(700)
Yes. Now then, was that tissue so thin that after a letter book had been stood for a while, I mean I don’t know what the period of time would be because the letter books that I have, they are all about 80 or 90 years old. Did the carbon work its way through the tissues so that it was, you’d a job to tell whether the carbon had gone through from the back of the tissue or the front?
(30 min)
R- Well, that depended to a certain extent on the quality of the carbon you see? You had various degrees and you had some that bled quickly and others that didn’t you see. That was largely the quality of the carbon and also the pressure put on by the pencil.
[25 years later this explanation is still unclear. I have a better understanding now from various sources and whilst George is absolutely correct in what he describes he doesn’t clearly explain one method of making copies which I now know was standard around 1900. Possibly methods had improved and carbon papers were becoming more common when George started work in the office. The earlier method was this: there was a special type of pencil called a ‘copying pencil’. The ‘lead’ in these pencils was soluble in water and resulted in a bright violet mark when wetted, in effect, the core was a solid ink. When you wrote a letter by hand with this pencil, laid a sheet of tissue over the top, placed a damp sheet of paper over the tissue and applied pressure the water passing through the tissue released the ink and it transferred to the underside of the tissue. The tissue was thin enough for this to be read from the upper side. I think that typewriter ribbons were developed using this ink and these were used as well but all the letters I have seen using this method were handwritten.]
And in those days you’d go out, your last job at night would be posting the day’s mail?
R- It was.
And if you posted a letter in Blackburn - what time did you finish at night? Normally?
R- Half past five.
Yes. And so if you posted a letter, let’s say at half past five or six o'clock in Blackburn, what sort of possibility was there of that letter being in, say Manchester the following morning?
R- It was a dead cert to get there. The last post left, the post office was open till eight o'clock. And, you could, if you were late, you could, by going round to the sorting office at the back of the post office, and paying an extra ha’penny you’d get it
posted and it was delivered the following morning. But I’ll tell you, arising when I went to this mill in 1906, there was a local carrier who had a horse, a small horse, and a flat on two wheels. Do you know what a flat is?
Yes.
(750)
R- And he was paid five shillings for taking two skips to Manchester overnight. From Blackburn to Manchester. Now it was the custom for the spinner to pay for [the carriage of] yarn to Manchester. There were certain customs in the trade, I'm almost sure that was one, because we paid, I remember it, I mean from petty cash, paying this man five shillings and getting a receipt from him you see.
Five shillings.
R- One horse, one man, he’d go the old Roman Road to Manchester.
You are quite right, things have changed. That’s one of the things that strikes me about these old letter books. You read them and, not from Blackburn, from Barnoldswick, this fellow used to put the time he wrote the letter on sometimes and I have letters that he wrote last thing at night to people in Manchester telling them that he was going to meet them on the following morning. And obviously he had complete faith that that letter was going to be on that man’s desk in Manchester at probably half past eight the following morning which is something that nowadays is just, well, you can’t rely on it to that extent.
R- Oh no, I’ll tell you another thing, there was a Sunday morning post in those days. So if you wrote a letter on Saturday at night it was delivered on Sunday morning. That was given up about 1914. I’m sorry really because on the whole, the way things have developed you want a bit of a change. But the post office, well they did give us service in those days.
[This point, though small, is an indicator of how highly organised the infrastructure was which supported the textile industry. It was incredibly efficient and was a factor in the speed the industry could react to trading situations. In turn, this meant that competition was encouraged and profit margins kept very low. This system worked well in times of full production but became a handicap when volumes fell and the customary low profits were offset by individual orders having to carry a higher proportion of fixed costs. In the years of decline this was a very important factor.]
Now, what other duties did you have as an office boy, what were your other duties? Obviously you’d have other things to do than just copy letters.
R- I made out the delivery sheets. The weights of the skips [skips were the tapered baskets used to transport yarn from the spinning mills. They were tapered so that they would fit inside each other for return carriage. They were developed when mule yarn was on paste or paper bottoms so there was no return traffic. When returnable pirns became common the industry moved on to wooden packing cases but skips were still in use into the 1960s to my knowledge. The Workshops for the Blind on Todmorden Road in Burnley specialised in the repair of skips.] gross, tare and net were sent up from the warehouse after they had been delivered and we had to transfer these to an invoice according to the terms of the contract and make the invoice out and send them off by post that night.
Who looked after the stamp book?
R- I did.
I thought perhaps you might. Was it ever wrong?
R- Well, I don’t recall but I know this, we were responsible for it, we had to account for every stamp.
So, in other words, if that stamp book was wrong, that was your wage.
R- Oh yes. But I don't recall that. But in those days, oh yes, responsibility, people were responsible for their actions. Not as it is today when every excuse is found for a mistake.
And from the office, when you took the job as office boy at Park Place Spinning Company, obviously you wouldn’t think of being an office boy all the days of your life. When you took that job as office boy, what did you envisage it leading you on to?
(35 min)
R- I wanted to make progress and as a matter of fact, occasionally I went to the mill at six o’clock in the morning to learn about the processes. On my own you see, so that I should know more about it.
Was that the management’s idea or was that your own idea?
R- That was my idea. Oh yes, I’d got my back to the wall. I just started from scratch. And you have to have a little ambition. Anyhow, that’s what I did. And the following September we came to, in those days people moved on what was known as the rent days. Twelfth of May and twelfth of September, but the annual move was on the twelfth of May. Now I’ll tell you something which is very important now. In those days there were houses to let throughout the length and breadth of the land. If you got a job in Halifax you could go and certain find a house to rent for yourself and your family. Now that was due to private enterprise. But I don't care for the word private, it was really enterprise in supply and demand. People built mills and they built houses.
It was profitable to fulfil a need. Yes.
(850)
R- To fulfil a need, yes. Now then, they found the money and had it. Now when I entered the profession in 1912, as a valuer, auctioneer, but I was doing the valuation work, I can tell you that landlords of houses were satisfied with a 5% return on their money and landlords of land were satisfied with the return of 4% on land. This is forgotten and the whole root of trouble of the housing for 50 years is due to the fact that no political party has had the courage to remove the Rent Restriction Act, that's upset the whole course of the housing and that is at the root of the trouble. I am
not the only one who believes that in the profession. But you see no political party at the moment has had the courage to do it, because they’re afraid of losing votes. But there will be no solution of the housing problem until there is a free market, in my opinion.
Well surely that’s true of a lot of other things as well. I just threw a phrase in there about it being profitable to fulfil a need. That’s it in a nut shell isn’t it?
R- Of course it is.
Because, if there's a need for something there's no need for any other body or government body, or anything like that to step in, as long as there's a fair profit to be made in fulfilling that need. But as soon as controls are imposed which make it unprofitable to fulfil that need, well then, it’s just fairy land to expect people to put private capital into such ventures.
R- Exactly.
That's one of the things that’s wrong with this country nowadays. I mean, you know yourself that even the parts of industry now which are the bread and butter… Well, for instance, Tom Clarke, Silentnight started off after the war with his gratuity. Him and his wife made bed springs up into mattresses in the back yard and in the kitchen. And it went on and Silentnight became one of the biggest names in the world in bedding and upholstery. I said to him the other day, “Tom, looking back, was there a point where you can say now with hindsight that that was when you should have stopped?”
(900)
He said “yes. Definitely. But I couldn’t. I had set out to be the biggest” That’s what I like about Tom, he’s honest. He said “I wanted to carry on and be the biggest but once you get to a certain size you start to run into problems which are connected with size and which start to cut down your profit margins. You’ve got to make do with very small profits.” Added to that is the fact that over the last five years control of profit and taxation has meant that in actual fact it isn't profitable for him to work for
himself any more. What they have had to do is what so many other firms have had to do, they have had to go with the tax system and form holding companies which in other words means that he hasn’t got personal control now. He has told his sons that when he first started the thing to do was to work like hell and make a way for yourself in life but now his advice is look after yourselves and get as much as you can out of the system. He says that this works for him, he is very comfortable, but it’s no good for the country.
(40 min)
At that time we were sat in his new offices at Salterforth and he said “Look at this lot.” It’s an old cotton mill which they have converted, Slater’s of Salterforth, Salterforth Mill. He said “Do you know, this didn't cost us a ha'penny. It all came out of tax, and it's wrong. We shouldn’t be able to get something like this. This place is absolutely useless, it doesn't make any money for anybody. We were far better off when we had a suite of offices down at Moss Shed because that place was working like hell. But it’s a tax advantage which we can’t afford to ignore. There are certain advantages in having it like this but we wouldn’t have done it if we couldn’t have had that money which meant we could do it for virtually nothing. The principle is wrong.” There are so many things like that nowadays and that’s one of the reasons why it is so important to come and interview people like you because apart from the
Fact that people are forgetting weaving, forgetting about tinsmithing and how to make riveted vessels and things like that we are gradually losing sight of the fact that in order to make any business a sensible proposition we’ve got to have what is a dirty word nowadays, we’ve got to have a profit in it for somebody. And anyone that argues against that, all you have to do is ask them one question; “If they weren’t paying a decent wage, would you go to work?” And of course they wouldn’t, not until they were hungry.
R- That’s it.
One of the things that is coming out with Mary and me doing these tapes is that we hear a lot of people talking about the reasons for the decline of the Lancashire Textile Industry, the weaving in particular. As far as weaving’s concerned, the biggest reason for the decline is nothing at all to do with the markets and it’s nothing to do with re-investment or anything like that. The biggest single factor I’m sure, and I know I’m on dangerous ground here because I am drawing conclusions, is that people aren’t hungry any more and if you want a good Lancashire loom weaver they’ve got to be hungry. They have to keep things going and people aren’t like that any more. These things are being forgotten Mr Singleton.
R- Not only are they being forgotten, but deliberately being put under the ground to suit certain politicians. It’s a crying shame and I think eventually the natural order will prevail. Like King Canute, he couldn’t control the waves and eventually….
The bill will have to be paid.
R- We will be like some of the empires of old, vanished. But one point I’d like to make, again, returning to the question of housing, before the welfare system introduced by Lloyd George, not the Socialists, operatives in Lancashire in particular were thrifty and their aim and object was to save sufficient to buy their own cottage and the one next door so that they had an income on retirement. Now the rents in those days, the poorest were about 4/6 and up to 8/6 a week including rates. Now for 8/6 you could get a three bedroomed cottage, 4/6 was the old-fashioned sort with only just piped water and a closet in the yard, no water, the dry pail system. I remember the water carriage system being introduced in my time. Now many of the houses which were subject to rent restriction were those which belonged to these people who were operatives. They weren’t bad landlords, they were good landlords, they had got to live peaceably with the people who lived next door. Oh it’s a crying shame, it is really.
And that’s one of the reasons why, I think I’m right in saying that to this day, Nelson has one of the highest proportions of owner-occupied houses in the country.
R- I’m not surprised.
Resulting from that system.
R- Yes.
SCG/22 May 2003
5,440 words.