THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 17TH OF JULY 1979 AT 16 COWGILL STREET, EARBY. THE INFORMANT IS HORACE THORNTON, TAPER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Right Horace, bits and pieces tape first today. What I want to do is just catch one or two loose ends together that we’ve had up to now before we actually get on to the photographs. Now I've got it worked out straight in me own mind now .. You were working at Rycrofts at Broughton Road at Skipton and Billy Lancaster, young Billy was running the engine there and old Billy was running the engine at the Big Mill.
R - Yes.
Now, with you knowing Billy, when he moved down to the Big Mill you took the opportunity of going working with him as oiler and maintenance man down there so that you could he nearer home. So you'd be working on the engine at Big Mill, at Victoria Mill, from 1945 till about 1947 and then you left them and went working for…
R - Johnsons.
Johnsons. Now then, there's one or two things in particular that I'd like to know a bit more about, about working on the engine. Now, first thing is…
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actually you’d be employed, you wouldn't be employed by the people who had the looms in the mill, you'd be employed by somebody else wouldn't you. And you tell me, who was employing you?
R- Proctor and Proctor, Grimshaw Street, Burnley, they were the men in charge. There were various mill companies all up and down Lancashire, and Proctor and Proctors, they were chartered accountants, and Teddy Wood were a mechanical engineer with string of letters after his name and he looked after the mills for them you see, New Road, Victoria Mill, and mills all up and down in Lancashire, I don’t know how many. But Captain Smith that lived up at Thornton and a Mr Jacques his brother in law owned the Victoria Mill.
Yes. Now would that be, am I right in thinking that was the Earby Shed Company?
Earby Shed Company were Broughton Shed here. [This is wrong of course. I think what Horace meant was Brook Shed on New Road and this was a slip of the tongue. ESC certainly owned Brook Shed. I think that the name that Smith and Jacques traded under was ‘The Mill Company. Shed occupancy is relatively easy to ascertain via the Manchester Exchange Directories but shed ownership can be a difficult matter.]
Aye. And I think that they owned Sough and all didn’t they?
R- Yes, that were Earby Shed Company. I don’t know who the shareholders were but Teddy Wood ran it for them and Proctor and Proctor, accountants, they ran it, paid the bills and let it to tenants and fixed the price the tenants had to pay. Who the shareholders were, nobody knew.
In other words, they acted as, where an estate would have an estate agent, they’d be agents for the actual mill owners.
R- Yes, and if any jobs wanted doing, Johnny Pickles got the job.
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Yes, that’s it, aye. So you were working [at Big Mill], what exactly was your job with them during that two years you were working with Billy Lancaster?
R- Well, we’d to be there, ordinary times, half an hour before starting time. The boiler man would be there at the same time. And you oiled round, saw that everything were filled with oil. Started the donkey engine up because you had to bar it round [the engine] for half an hour, you’d to get all the bearings moving, there were such an amount of shafting the engine wouldn’t start it on it’s own without this. Especially in cold weather when everything were stiff. [Cold grease in the shafting bearings. Victoria Mill was a peculiar layout, it was vary long in relation to its size and had a greater proportion of shafting to space than most other mills.] So you barred the engine round for half an hour and it would start then would the engine but not without you barred it round. That were the procedure, morning, dinner time, breakfast time, three times a day you’d to bar up. And usually, when you’d got running, everything going all right, you’d lots of jobs you’d
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to do round about the mill, or you went round, my half, went round to see all the bottles were filled and there were no hot bearings or anything. [Evidently Horace was responsible for half the mill and the bottles he refers to are the oil bottles that dripped oil into the main shaft bearings. The individual line shafts that carried the pulleys for the looms relied on grease pads in the bearings.] In Winter time, go into the boiler house and help the fire man, bad coal, clean a fire or two out for him. [Heavy firing, especially with bad coal, meant a lot of ash and clinker in the boiler furnaces and this had to be cleaned out to maintain heat transfer. Victoria Mill was under-boilered and they were always pressed hard but even more so in winter with the additional load of the steam heating in the sheds.] Any jobs there were, but usually in Summer time when you weren’t steaming the mill and everything were going
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all right, well .. you sat out on the bridge for hours on end. I mean, it was quite a comfortable job. Just a quick look round to see to it the engine were all right. But usually you’d some jobs to do, putting windows in and such things as that, and jobs, general maintenance. Winter time you did turn and turn about. If it wasn’t too cold you came at three or four o’clock at the morning, get the steam round, Sunday night came at midnight, steam [the mill] and get everything warm. See, they were getting fairly strict then, it’s supposed to be 55 degrees [Fahrenheit] for the start. And go round the shed and look at the thermometers at dead of night, and that’s all you did.
[What Horace is describing is the common routine in all the local weaving sheds. The North light roofs allowed rapid heat loss. The sheds were heated by steam at full boiler pressure in two inch diameter iron pipes suspended in the roof space about nine feet above floor level. This is of course the worst place to put the pipes in terms of efficient heating but was done like this because if the warps were subjected to anything other than gentle indirect heat, they would dry out and give trouble when weaving. The consequence was that the air in the roof space next to the windows, the coldest place in the shed, had to be warmed before any effect could be felt at floor level. I have seen the temperature fall at floor level as the steam went in many a time when warming the shed. This was because the rising warm air was forcing the cold air from the roof down on to the floor. Very disheartening! Note Horace’s reference to ‘dead of night’, there was no light apart from what you carried and the shed could be an eerie place. You were never more alone.]
What were it like warming it up? Was it as bad as it usually was?
R- Well you can imagine, they were like greenhouses and there were only steam pipes wandering back and forwards, well .. it just went straight up at that place, and straight through the glass. Johnsons had a lot of fans, fixed on the steam pipe to distribute the heat, and that did all right. And then we doubled up with steam pipes, we seemed to he putting miles of steam pipe in extra because of what they’d done for the workers before the war wouldn’t do after, there were all these regulations about a certain degree
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of warmth and working all week ends. And then part of the Big Side had been used for storing ammunition during the war. [They closed] a number of looms down and the work people had to go into munitions. And the warehouse and parts of the shed were empty in some cases, probably had been empty for, well, I don’t know, twenty years. And then after the war, when there were a bit of a boom, every place were taken. There were the New Bridge Weaving Company [Newbridge Mill Ltd. Lower Clough Mill, Barrowford. P A Fewster mill manager. Source Lancashire Textile Industry, 1941.] they took a shed here, so many looms, a couple of hundred or something like that. And he were a chap that didn't really know what he wanted. We spent all week end moving pulleys, moving looms and moving pulleys and he couldn’t be satisfied where he wanted them. Because I know my mate told him straight once, he said “Tell you what you want Mr Fewster, you ought to get all your looms on castors!” Aye he did.
What was his name, that fellow?
R - Fewster.
Just one thing that strikes me there .. I think Fred Inman worked for him at one time.
R- He did, Fred Inman worked for him. I think he came from Birley’s to work for Newbridge. That’s where I first come in contact with Fred, good tackler were Fred, very patient, didn’t lose his temper. Oh no, he was a good man were Fred.
Yes, he still is.
R- But it were funny were that. He didn’t take offence, but he didn’t do as much of it. You know, every week end that come moving looms and moving pulleys on the shafting.
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Aye. Something that I should have asked you about before, you’ve triggered me off there, as I said, this is going to be a bits and pieces tape. You’d worked in textile mills right the way from the end of the 1918 war, the 14/18 war, up to [the present day] and now we’ve got to the stage where it’s after the second world war. During the second world war, how did things change in the mill? Were there any changes? Now obviously we are talking now about your experience at Broughton Road. How did things change? Did you notice any changes in the way the mill was run and the way the workers were treated? Could they be attributed to the war? Shortage of labour and such?
R- I don’t think so, it were a gradual change. More regulations came in and the guaranteed week. They hadn't to be sending you home if you’d only two looms you see. It was that they’d to pay them a guaranteed wage, that were the best thing that ever happened. And then holidays with pay come in, there’d never been anything like that before, you were feeling a bit more secure. And then the Beveridge report came out during the war to keep people working on the war effort you see, think of the promised land when the war is won and over. It were a gradual change. When they put in for holidays with pay we just used to think it’ll never happen, never happen in the cotton. And then when it got to a fortnight, well it was unbelievable.
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That’s a fortnight’s holiday with pay?
R- Yes, with pay, yes. And a guaranteed week and that were the most wonderful thing. Weaving had always been hit and miss job, had been for years. Like, all my experience there were firms all round you going bankrupt and you did use to long to get a job that you were certain of a wage every week. Now when Bill Lancaster asked me to come here it were that guaranteed week that persuaded me to come here apart from other things like being at home and more wage than what I were getting at Skipton. But .. guaranteed wage whether you were…holidays or what it were, bags of overtime.
While we’re talking about wages, now what was your wage when you come away from Broughton Road?
R- About £3-15-0 a week.
That’s £3-15-0? [£3.75]
R- Yes. And if I could have got away, you see [I was in ] a reserved occupation, if I could have got away I wouldn’t have cared whether it had been into the army or what it were. But having to go down there and work for next to nothing. I could have started at Rolls and they were coming out with £10, £15, £20 a week.
Even in those days. Now when you came down to Earby as oiler on the engine, what was the rate there?
R- £5 straight off, for a bare week..
Would you say that, in general, people in reserved occupations, the management knew that they more or less had them by the short hairs. Were they worse paid than people that weren’t reserved?
R- Yes. A man that were over military age, he could demand anything if he missed being directed to a certain job. But otherwise you wore stuck there, there were no overtime, no nothing, just a bare wage and you couldn’t get away, you couldn’t do anything.
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Now tell me, did the conditions apply during the war? When did this change? Before the war, in weaving, they were paid purely on piece work, they were paid on so much a piece and the number of pieces they got off in the week.
R - Yes.
Now then, obviously under that system it was possible, if you hadn’t many looms running and you were on bad warps and you were unlucky it was possible to work all week and perhaps only get one piece off, perhaps only get six bob for a week’s work. When did that change?
R- When the guaranteed wage come in.
Yes, when was that.
R- I can’t really tell you what year it was but it were after the war. Well it might have been during the war, I can’t just remember. But down at Skipton a man had four looms and his wife were working at the side of him and they’d only three loom apiece or two loom apiece. They wouldn’t let the wife go sign on and the husband run the four looms, that were the conditions before the war started. They made them come to their work and you couldn’t sign on.
Would you say that the sort of scales of pay and the conditions we are talking about were worse in the textile industry than they were in other industries?
R- Worse than any industry because where you get predominantly female labour they can do anything with them.
Do you think that was one of the reasons?
R- Weavers are never on strike, “Oh we are all right. Oh It’s all right. There is plenty.” That’s why wages are poor.
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Do you mean, what you’re saying, really, is that part of the troubles of weaving, the fact that weaving’s never been regarded as a skilled job and it’s never been a highly paid job is the fact that there were so many married women weavers who [had their husband’s wage to fall back on]
R- Yes.
Who more or less regarded weaving as a way of earning extra money rather than the basic wage.
R- In a cotton town there were mill work or shop work or servants, there were nothing else. And the bosses usually owned the factories and owned the land all around. No one else could come and start up a do, any different to weaving.
Aye, that’s interesting. Now that’s an interesting point, yes.
R- They couldn’t start another industry where there were cheap labour, because they couldn't get land to build, they couldn’t rent anything. And Armoride started down there, you know where they are? Grove?
Aye, Grove. [Grove Mill at Earby]
R- And, they wanted to move from Idle, I think it were Bradford way they were at. Before the war when there were such a lot of unemployed at Bradford, Armoride were such a poor paying shop there were always vacancies, and they gave anybody that were signing on the chance to go, but they weren’t forced to go. They didn’t stop their dole if they didn’t go because the wage rate were so poor. It were a Jewish firm and when they took the Grove there were people come over like our foreman and they told me, the people that’d been moved from Idle hereto, that it was the worse paid shop. And when they enquired for a place to move to they were given a list all round and square within reasonable distance of Bradford and Earby was the lowest wage place of any of the other places. What people were paid here. And there were another flaw, there were another thing about weaving,
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your wages were fixed from Manchester, you were paid on Manchester rate, and the bosses always said that Colne and round here were at a disadvantage because they’d more carriage to pay on the weft coming out of Lancashire and the goods going back. And wages were 5% less for weavers and everybody here than they were further on into Lancashire.
[‘Local Disadvantages Allowances: The prices set out in this List are subject to the respective deductions for local disadvantage in certain districts prescribed by the Award of the Industrial Court made under the provisions of the Industrial Courts Act, 1919 and dated the 28th day of April 1920.’ { Extract from the Uniform List of Prices. 1935} The Uniform list was agreed each year between the Cotton Spinners and Manufacturers Association and the Amalgamated Weavers Association and was the bible on which all wage rates were based.]
Yes, of course that was what they called Local Disadvantages.
R- Disadvantages.
And before the 1914/1918 war there were quite a few strikes about that weren’t there?
R- Well, they didn’t alter it, did they?
No.
R- It’ll still be going on, even though Rycrofts, their stuff nearly all went to Bradford. They had that 5% disadvantage. But if it’d been the other way about …
That's interesting, of course Rycrofts were cotton. And did they come under the same uniform list as you would if you were say, weaving fancies in Lancashire?
R- Lancashire, yes. And there were the fancy…
Because they consolidated the list didn’t they?
R- Yes they did, but it were after a long time. But anybody that worked at Rycrofts could work anywhere. If anything new come out, Rycrofts were in at it. New things, it wore a costly, costly business for them when they took silk up. Getting used to it, and I’ve seen out of 100 yards you’d throw 50 yards under the table. And it went on like that. But they gradually mastered it and got to be perfect in the stuff. Warps were anywhere when they were coming in. There were British Enkalon, it were a Dutch firm but it were called British Enkalon, they’d opened a place here and that were rough. There were viscose and acetate, but acetate were always the hardest and the harshest, more breaks in it than in cellulose, that were Celanese.
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But they mastered it did Rycrofts, they were in at everything.
Was there any change in attitude .. 1 mean, let’s put it this way, before the war it was common to see tramp weavers waiting in the warehouse, and time keeping of course was strict in consequence, because if you weren’t there on your looms there was a tramp weaver on. How did that change during the second world war?
R- During the war, there weren’t any during the war, they’d to be working, they could get work anywhere, there were no tramp weavers. But you did as you liked as regards going to your work. The time you went to your work.
So the old discipline slacked off a bit in the mill. Now another thing about that, would this be about the time when the tacklers, the overlookers, perhaps lost a bit of their power? Do you think that’s fair to say Horace?
R- Well, I don’t know about that, they were always very strong you know? But it got to be like this, they’d turn up any time would people, tackler or anybody. They always used to lock the door but they used to go back home again you see? And they were sending for them, knocking at the door. It’s altered so much you see, they couldn’t do without a tackler for a set of looms. They’d say ‘Where’s suchabody?’ ‘Oh, he’s been and the door were locked and he’s gone back home.’ So they stopped locking the door.
Aye.
R- And I were working [at Rycrofts] and going on me bicycle. Well, August and September, when there were plenty of mushrooms about, I’d go out into the field and mushrooming and happen land at quarter to eight instead of seven o’clock with a stone of mushrooms. They couldn’t do anything because I were wanting to finish.
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Stuck there doing nothing and working for nothing and they were business people were Rycrofts but they were tight folk. And they [the workers] used to get fed up. “Everybody working here for this money, let’s go down in the office! It’s all right when you go down into the office.” And there were weavers, as always, some wanted to go and some didn’t. And finally, “We’ll go down this afternoon.” Then you go and knock at the office door and the office lass would come to the door and “What do you want?” You had to tell ‘em what you wanted and “I’ll go and see what he has to say.” And it were always the same tale “I’m very busy now, I’ve a traveller in I’ve got a meeting. Just go back to your work and I’ll send for you tomorrow when I’m at liberty” Well, once he could do that, all the fire had gone out of them. It took a lot to get them all of one mind, to repeat the same thing. And if you did get to see him, if he sent for you, perhaps next day or the day after, or if it were Monday you went in, Tuesday were market day so they were off, nobody there. And then if you didn't catch him at Wednesday, they were down to Bradford at Thursday, well it’d happen
dribble on to the next Monday. Well, you'd lost all the enthusiasm the weavers had before they went the first time. But they were crafty enough. [The bosses]
When did you first see this? When did you first join a union? Was it while… ?
R- When I went to Rycrofts, they were on to you immediately.
Aye. That was when you started at Rycrofts?
R- Started at Rycrofts.
So that’d be 1920?
R- No, 1925 or 1926. Yes, I were about 21 years old.
So they’d be on to you straight away, the union. And what union did you join there Horace?
R- It wore the Clothlookers, warehouse men. And they had an office at Colne..
How much good did they do you'?
R- Well, they couldn't get you any more money. I mean they used to apply but that were all. They couldn't do anything until the war started you see, and all the men left that could leave. A chap that wasn’t of military age, you see they couldn’t do anything with him, they could just go. But the older men stuck it, they were living nearby, their homes were near to their work.
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When did you first start to regard the Union as a body that could do something for you? You know, when did they start to gain a bit of power? Was it when labour got short during the war?
R- Well you felt you’d a bit of power when you were all united. One man on his own couldn’t do anything you see. If you were all in a union, well, any trouble you just report it to the union and left it to them to do what they could.
Were you ever brought out on strike while you were at Rycrofts?
R- No. No, I don't think so. Perhaps once. Yes, it would be just once, all the weavers, and it was one of these where you came out and the next day you went back in with a half crown in the pound deduction. That’s the way it used to be.
Aye. In all your experience up to, let’s say up to the second world war, the start of the second world war. Do you know of any instance where anybody in textiles went out on strike and actually gained an advance in wages?
R- Not previous to the war.
No. Have you ever seen the textiles go out and get an advance since the beginning of the war?
R- No, I can’t remember us ever being on strike. Not since the war because it were all negotiated by the unions.
When you came to Earby as oiler on the engine did you still stay on in the same union or join another union or just let your payments lapse?
R- I let it lapse.
So while you were working with Billy Lancaster on this engine down here you wouldn’t be in a union?
R- No.
Well I think we’ll quietly come back to here then. When you came to Earby to work, obviously you were living in Earby, when you came to Earby to work at the Big Mill, what was your general impression when you first came of .. you know, the mill, the state of the plant, anything at all?
R- Well when Johnsons took that mill there, I knew Bill Lancaster like, I’d known him all the time. Well since he used to run the engine at Broughton Road. I knew him all that time and then I used to travel with him on the train you see. People of one place always used to crowd into one or two carriages, same lot every night. And he told us about Johnsons taking this place and says “You mun come down tonight and I’ll take you round.” And I were amazed, everything painted, walls painted, electric lights, steam pipes painted with aluminium paint, not a speck of dust anywhere, everything painted. I’d never seen anything like it.
This was Johnson’s part of the Mill, yes?
R- Johnsons yes.
And did that compare with Rycrofts?
R- Well it were just ordinary paint. What they did was paint every five year, if they did, and whitewash every twelve months. But during the war years that wore waved to one side. They swept but it wasn’t clean. They might have thought it were clean but . this was like a palace, all one colour, a nice blue grey paint, everything. Oh it were a revelation. Floors clean you know no mess about. Now the other place, the other shed at the other side, when you went working in there and you were doing anything you could just touch the thick dawn [Dawn is the name we gave to the fine cotton fibres that clung to everything in the mill. My mother used to tell me that I was ‘Worse than dirt dawn!” when she sauced me.] on the steam pip, just give it a push and it’d run off, run off the full length of the weaving shed, just same as a long sausage, that were how dirty they were. They swept the floors and the looms and that were all they did. It wore just like this place, it were just in such a state as that mill you were showing me. And the tape.
Aye. Bancroft, that's it. And how about the condition of the plant, boilers, the engine and such as that?
R- Well they were just falling in bits. Everywhere, everything were just [a mess]. Well, when I first went, my first impression of the engine, I went underneath it and everything were rocking, the air pumps, you went on down the steps and onto the iron grates in between them, you’d to watch when you were passing
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and make a rush to get past, if you didn’t, when these flanges opened, water came out like a hosepipe and that’s what you had to do, just dart through at the opportune moment.
Aye, that was the old air pumps that Newton, well Johnny and Newton replaced wasn’t it.
R- Yes, it were all right after that. But in summer time we used to lose the vacuum, and so all we had to do was fix a hosepipe on to a hydrant, just outside the engine room door and get the grate open, have the hosepipe running into the top of the air pumps you see to cool them down. [Victoria had a poor condenser pond and in summer when the beck was low they often ran short of water for the air pumps. This was exacerbated by the poor condition of the plant and was eventually cured when Brown and Pickles replaced the air pumps. See the AG series of tapes.] And one night when we’d stopped we just took the hosepipe off, whoever had done it I don’t know, it could have been me or it could have been my mate. It could have been Lancaster. We took the hosepipe off but didn’t shut the valve. We hadn’t taken the hosepipe off, just dragged it out of the air pumps and dragged into what they called the ballroom and left it like that ready for morning but hadn’t shut the valve. [What Horace hasn’t made clear is that the hydrant was fed off the steam fire pump and once this was stopped, no water would run. What followed was a consequence of starting the fire pump without making sure that no other hoses were connected. In many mills the fire pump was used as a feed pump for topping up the boilers. This was very bad practice and again, a consequence of bad maintenance, but common practice as it was an easy way out.] Well, the boilerman came on after tea, he must have been short of water [in the boilers] and he started the fire pump up to fill the boilers up. He weren’t an experienced man, he’d worked at Gargrave and they only wanted a bit of steam, 30 or 40 psi, that was all he’d been used to. And he started the fire engine up and couldn’t get no water in the boiler. He went on about a couple of hours and we wore and we were working inside in the shed somewhere on the engine, and we didn’t take any notice of what were going on, it weren’t our department. We heard it clanking [the fire pump] and then he come in and he said “I can’t get no water into the boiler.”
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So “Come and have a look at it.” Oh my God! He’d been pumping that hosepipe full bore into the ballroom and it was running through the floor and on to all the Newbridge cloth down below, running out of the door there into the drains. I mean he were a numbskull to go on all that time pumping away and nothing doing but he thought that the fire pump weren’t working. It were hit and miss job ‘cause I told you about the clack had gone down in the well.
Aye, when you went to it and took the pipe out of the well and the clack was missing altogether at the bottom of it.
R- Yes, there were just a bit of the metal part, all the leathers had gone. And talk about going hot and cold! When we rushed down below we were in a state! And what had saved them, there wore piles of silk, all over the place, but every one had a big sheet of paper over, Kraft, that Kraft paper, right strong paper. And every one were covered with sheets of paper, and the water had just run off and dropped on to the floor. There were just the selvedges, some of them were wet. And so we’d to set to sweeping it out, sweeping it out of the ballroom down the steps. I could write a book on the mishaps that there were there.
[A word about what was going on here as it is very good evidence of the state of maintenance that Horace was describing. One initial point, the problem he is describing isn’t due to wartime shortages, it is down to inadequate maintenance, probably due to old Bill Lancaster reaching the end of his time and letting things go. When Horace says the boilerman came back after tea to fill his boilers this is an indication that the boiler feed water pumps were in bad condition, almost certainly just a matter of grinding the clack valves in. This meant that during the course of the day the boilerman was losing his water level. This is no big problem with a Lancashire boiler, as long as the water level is above the bottom nut on the water gauge glasses you are perfectly safe. What he had done was go home, have his tea and come back to get his water level up for the following morning’s start. The feed pumps at Victoria ran off the engine and when it was stopped the only recourse he had was the steam driven fire pump. This pump is not intended for this duty, it pulls off the mains water supply and is not metered so though illegal, it is a cheap source of water. They evidently had a permanent connection into the feed water main, probably an insurance requirement as they had no independent feed pump. In addition, Horace had told me that the fire pump was not reliable because the clack valve seating in the well was worn out and allowed the pump to lose it’s water in the riser pipe. It was touch and go whether it would prime itself at the best of times. Bad maintenance again. So, when the boilerman started the pump and got no water he assumed it was the clack and it might eventually pick up. In fact what was happening was that the pump was working normally but because it was pumping against an open hose in the Ballroom there was no delivery against the boiler pressure. All told a sorry tale, the root of which was bad maintenance all round. Incidentally, the Ballroom was the name for the second floor in the old multi-storey section of Victoria Mill. When Horace talks about loose rivets in the boiler in the section below, this is almost certainly a direct result of pumping large amounts of cold water into a hot boiler with the fire pump. ]
Aye, well that’s what we are doing Horace, that’s what we are doing. This is all part of the job, these are the things that happened.
R- They did but oh dear… the various things that happened. How that engine ran I don’t know. And we were having a lot of trouble with the boilers after that, the way it had been running without water and it’d stretched all the plates and they pushed them back, next boiler there were rivets going and they were coming every week and doing a bit at it. And the boiler front rivets were stretched there and they [the insurance surveyors] were coming every week, they wanted the mill owners [to do something about it] So we had the [stoker] hoppers to take off every Friday night when they finished. Strip them down, carry them away so the men could come in and work on putting fresh rivets in.
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Who were it that came?
R- The boiler makers, Yates and Thom.
Yates and Thom from Blackburn.
R- They used to come and work the week end and then it got to Sunday tea time, they’d go and we’d all that boiler front to put on and get steam up on that boiler. We had the other two boilers going. But I got to the stage, you know there was a big plate to crane off but I got to know every bit of them, them hoppers, I could have taken them off and replaced them blindfold!
Aye, that’s the way to learn Horace!
R- But it went on week after week. I were never at home, working nights and working through the night and then going on steaming. The wife weren't used to that sort of work, she thought I was at a madhouse.
Tell me about some of the problems, some of the simple little problems that you met up with. Just doing simple things like going down and steaming the shed at night to get it warm.
R- Well the traps used to freeze up but they solved that. All the steam were returned into a tank, there were no traps blowing out. You see if they’d been stood all Saturday and freezing that water in the traps. There were all sorts of things but that were the worse do when I’d to cut a split pipe off that went across from the engine house to the boiler and thread a couple of pipes and fit them, all on your own up a ladder and just a gas lamp on the wall outside the Devil Hole [The cellar that housed the waste breaking machines in the old days, they were called devils because they frequently caught fire.] They had no electricity then, and the light were shining up, depth of winter and I thought “Oh my God, What a bloody fool you’ve been to come to this place!”
Tell me something, I think I'm right in saying that when you went there, there wasn’t even electric light in the engine house.
R- There wasn’t no. It happened after a while. Why they didn't have electric light, the room and power company were the Earby Light and Gas company. And you couldn’t have electric light, you had got to have gas and the whole of the sheds
were all lit by gas. They built a new plant down here, on the New Road here and it hardly ever ran, there were a man killed when they were trying it.
That was a gas plant?
R- Gas plant. Built a new gas plant and so they had a pipe put into Barnoldswick and Barnoldswick supplied Earby Gas and Light Company and they supplied the customers in Earby. But it was a private company until the gas were nationalised.
So that electric [going in] I know Newton told me that it was when Rigby was down there. What was his name?
R- Henry Rigby?
When Henry Rigby went to do for Billy, because Billy was poorly for a long time.
R- Oh he were off a couple of years.
Billy was a poorly man, wasn’t he.
R- Aye. But many a time we was on us own you see. But I tell you, that particular day when Wilf McKie, his wife were dying of consumption,
He was your mate on the boilers and the engine?
R- Yes, and he were a good man to work with, he were a good lad.
And Billy were off as well, Billy Lancaster?
R- Billy were off as well. Boiler man hadn’t turned up, a man called Lindsay, his wife were ill and I were stuck there by meself in winter time. When I told the tale I said “If there isn’t something done by breakfast time I’m going and all!”
(850)
So you had three boilers, the engine and all the shafting to look after.
R- Yes, all that. And then Teddy Wood came on in the middle of the morning. “Keep it going, keep it going, and if anything happens to Bill the engine’s yours!” I said “It’s a bloody tale, I wouldn’t have it given!” And I wouldn’t, a bundle of old iron it were. Everywhere, slates off the roof, windows out, sheer neglect. Boiler house roof, rain coming in.
What was the reason for that? I mean, when you think about it, surely these men had the sense to realise that the power unit was everything? You’d have thought that they’d have looked after it.
R- They’d that few tenants, and the tenants they had they perhaps weren't getting there rent. They were small firms in that far side. Birleys used to be there and they’d left and gone over to the Albion so that were all empty. How long it were empty I don’t know but when Johnsons come they said we must have electric light or we won’t have it. So, Johnsons had electric light and the other parts of the mill hadn’t. Now when they became nationalized it didn’t matter then but before that…
When who was nationalised?
R- The gas works.
Aye, that’s it.
R- It didn’t matter, they didn’t care. So all the other firms, they put electric lighting in for the other firms. And we had a dynamo run of the engine you see to light the engine house and the boiler house. We used to have 12 volt lamps to go in to the boilers. We’d old Smokey Joes before.
Aye with stink lamps as we used to call them.
R- Stink lamps, aye. That’s what you went into the boilers with, scaling and cleaning out.
Aye, what were it like for scale down there, what were the water like?
R- Well, sheer neglect, you could get, you could get lumps off like layers of flags. . You could, it were just like hacking layers of flag off. But you see when it were all empty here and the other tenants couldn’t afford to pay there’d be hardly enough money to keep the plant going at all, pay the wages and pay for the coal. I think they’d been charging, before the war, about half a crown a loom. I don’t know how much for a tape but I think that’s what it was. I saw some bills, so many looms. at half a crown a loom, and glad to get them at that.
(900)
I know I’ve heard people say that just before the war it was possible to buy Calf Hall Shed Company shares for nowt.
R- Yes they could.
And I dare say the Earby Shed Company and companies like the Mill Company would be the same.
R- Well, I don’t know whether Johnsons have any of the right old Lancashire looms yet but when they started those looms cost a pound apiece and they just ran on and on.
I think they still have some of those looms in.
R- Yes I think they will have.
Because when they did them up, the last modernisation, they threw all the automatics and broad looms out and just kept the old Lancashires.
R- Yes, they were just useless but it were government money that. I think they were getting something for nothing. This fancy tape, well it were just a dead loss absolutely, and the looms were, well, there were top shafts breaking at the rate of six and eight a week. Have you ever known that…?
SCG/27 March 2003
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