THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 21st OF JULY 1979 AT 16 COWGILL STREET, EARBY. THE INFORMANT IS HORACE THORNTON, TAPER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
This is the fifth and final tape in the description of the taping pictures in the Bancroft Folio. We are just going to describe the pictures where Joe has doffed the warp and he’s just tidying the warp up and tying it up ready for wheeling away to the twisting department.
So now we are on picture number 96 and follow these through Horace.
R - Yes. He's doffed the warp and he is tying it up before he takes it into the storeroom. He lays the comb carefully on the top, and he gets a band, we call them bands or thrums, and ties it round. Page 97. he is tying it round and 98 similar he’s just tied a knot in it there. And there is a truck here ready to put it on. It's shaped, they take the shape of the beam, and it's covered with a piece of old leather belting so as the wood of the truck doesn't damage it. And this picture's similar just finishing tying up.
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Ninety-nine
R - Ninety-nine he’s doing the same and ... hundred he is ...
Hundred. He is ... Now then 100, picture number 100
R - He's put the warp on the truck and he is wheeling it away into the storeroom. This is a back view of Joe wheeling it away.
One hundred and one.
R – 101, he is wheeling the warp away and 102 he's put it on the floor in the store place.
And in 102 you can see the warp card that he's shoved in which he had written out in there and it's pushed in under the first sheet of the warp.
R - It gives the quality. and the number of ends and it's a double ticket, one for the weaver and one for the office. And ... number of ends and counts and date, and .. all other particulars. And that ticket goes into the office and they get a card made out for the weaver, with the price and the counts and the wheel, the length of a cloth when it’s woven, all has to be noted by the weaver and the tackler. The tackler has to put the change wheel on to give a certain pick and a certain length of the cloth. And all the other particulars are for the weaver, the wefts that
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she has to get, and counts and everything.
Yes, and that ticket finishes up it's hung on the loom while she is weaving it.
R -- Yes.
Now then, in effect now .. today's the red letter day, Horace. We've, we've finished off the taping that I wanted to do with you, because we’ve gone right through your life story, and we've gone right through the Bancroft tapes, and it's .. I'd just like to tell you now that you have been a cracker. It's, it's all right is that lot, but we've got best part of a tape left, and so we are not going to waste it, we are going to sit here, and just talk about one or two things that might interest both of us and just see what comes out of it. Now, one of the things that struck me, taping you is that fact that in common with so many other people that I've been and done interviews with, I get the feeling that if you had had the opportunities that children are getting today, that you would probably have gone a lot further than being a taper for Johnsons. Now I don't know whether this is something to do with the way I select people to do tapes with, or not. But I come across this quite regularly and I find that there are certain
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people, and they're usually the people that are fairly lucid and can talk, and have evidently done some thinking, and they are usually good subjects for taping and they're people who I feel could have done a lot better for themselves if they'd had more opportunities when they were young.
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So just sit there and just give me your thoughts about that, about what the differences are nowadays to what they were when you were young. And it's not a question of you being arrogant or anything like that you know. Try and tell me honestly what you think you would have done you know, what you would have liked to have done if things had been different and you hadn't been working in a small village where everything was set out for you.
R - Well I suppose as a young lad, with me grandfather and me uncles having a joiner’s shop there, I used to spend a lot of time in the joiner’s shop making bits of things and playing with the tools. And they'd let me have old tools and I'd play with them. Well, if there'd been any opportunity and my uncles had put me to joining, cabinet making, undertaking, I should have probably finished up there. But why they didn't I don't know. He had four lads and he didn't put any of them into the trade. They were older than I was and they were, one worked at Greens wood yard, one worked on the railway, and two were weavers. He didn't put his own lads in so there were no hope of him putting his sister's lads in.
Why do you think he didn't have his own lads to follow him on?
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R - Nobody could ever understand that because the business is still going. When his sons got married he had a boy and he were called Joseph Whiteoak after his grandfather and immediately that lad were old enough, his father put him into joinering and when he came out of his time, he put him into the business and he has the business now. You see there were my grandfather and his brother came from Broughton. Their father used to be the estate joiner at Broughton and he had two boys, Matthew and John, and they grew up and there were no joiner’s shop in Carleton, so they went and opened a business there, joiners and wheelwrights.
Just to refresh my memory your mother would be a Whiteoak?
R - My mother were a Whiteoak. And ...
Is that any relation to Alf Whiteoak up on Whitemoor?
R - Well, I think they'd be all one lot. They'd be all one lot of Whiteoaks..
Right ...
R - .. because there is part up at Lothersdale and there used to be part here. And there were part round Broughton. There were two sons who went to Carleton and started a business there, they built houses and did all the farm work round about, made carts and made cartwheels. I spent that much time in the joiners shop I could make a cartwheel. I know every process in making a cartwheel like fitting the spokes and chopping the spokes out and wheels. But there were one thing they didn't do, hooping the wheels, they went to Skipton to a chap that ...
Aye that's it.
R - But on a farm cart or any small ironwork they did everything, they made the hooks and brackets, they made the brake shoes, the lot, everything about them. All the gear on the cart shafts, they did the lot, painting them, lining them, and the lot. Made coffins, made windows, making a sash window .. there'll
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(10 min)
not be many joiners about that could make a sash window now.
And is that the sort of thing that you would have liked to have done?
R – Well, I've always been interested in it. But when I were twelve, the day I were twelve I went into the mill. The school and this boss of the mill were in with each other. They didn't learn you anything more than reading, writing, arithmetic. Anybody that were good, well they were just wasting their time and I always was good at maths, always. I know for a year or two I just sat and read books.
What do you think of the sort of education that kids get today? Try and contrast it with your own.
R - Well, they've every chance, but they won't take the chance won't a lot of them. They are not all alike, some try and get on, but it's got to the stage now that there isn't jobs even for the brainy ones.
You are saying something there, I'm going to push you a bit on that. I'll just go on a little bit about it and then you'll see what my drift is. We’ve all heard it, heard it time and time again, you know the old thing about 'Things aren't what they used to be' and 'The younger generation isn't what it was' and all the rest of it. And I have a sneaking suspicion that the Romans were saying that when they left Britain, that things weren't what they used to be, and I often wonder whether things are really very much different with say our children and grandchildren than they were with us when we
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were young. And it's very difficult to sort out the wheat from the chaff. I think meself that education in a lot of ways, especially primary school education, which is really what we are talking about, because you never had any chance for anything else but primary school education.
R - Anything else, no.
I really think that in some ways it's better, but it's very patchy. You can get a very small village school where they are running on old fashioned lines and they turn children out who, it seems to me, are better educated than some of the children that I see turned out of some of the schools. I'm not going to mention any names, same of the schools in Barnoldswick at the moment, I don't know, they seem to me to be some very bad results coming out of primary schools. Now, how does it strike you?
R - Well, it all depends on the teacher. It's all the teacher, whether they are interested or not. But when you see that, some of the teachers going to the school, look at them, I wouldn't like them to teach a dog of mine, I wouldn't. Long hair and untidy and how can they expect the children to be anything else?
So you think example's a lot to do with it?
R - Yes it has. And a good teacher makes good scholars. Anybody that has any brains he'll bring it out in them. All children aren't alike but 1 think it depends on the teacher.
I've a lot of sympathy with that point of view, and I'm reminded of something I heard somebody saying not so long since that the best thing we could do to improve the education of our children was to, I think what he actually said was 'Multiply the pay of primary school teachers by ten, and the pay of secondary school teachers by five' and the idea was that that would automatically attract all the best brains to teaching, and that we'd finish up with a better education system.
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Now I know that that isn't feasible, but that sort of attitude, I have a lot of sympathy with that sort of attitude. I think that we should realise that it's the teachers that count. but I mean, in the old days when you think back, I mean the teachers that taught you .. I don't think for one minute that they'd be any more brainy than the teachers that we’ve got now and in many ways they were no more moral. I mean for instance, I think that it's unethical for a headmaster to work in close, you know in company with the manager, the owner of the local mill to make sure that he gets plenty of labour, but those things happened. But what are your views on that?
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R - Well .. John Arthur Slingsby, he were chairman of the school governors and they appointed the teachers. They weren't appointed by the council, it were a church provided school, an endowed school. And he were the chairman, and one or two more of the village people were the governors and they appointed the teachers, and if Mr Lilly hadn't gone his way, Mr Lilly would had been out on his neck. They were forced to go that way. I don't think he, I don't suppose he wanted it.
We are getting into the thing now that you mentioned that I thought was very interesting. About the fact that the reason why the mill owners went on so well was that they had a reservoir of cheap labour.
R - Cheap labour.
And that it was very difficult for anybody else to set up any business in a mill town because the mill owners had got the…
R- Land.
The land sewn up.
R- They owned all the land round.
Yes. Now do you think that that was .. do you think that was just a lucky chance or do you think that it was done deliberately. Do you think that they knew what they were doing?
R- They bought the houses as well, they owned the houses so anybody who was sacked at Slingsby's had to get out of their house. And anybody that didn't agree with their methods and the work and pay were too bad, well they went to Barnoldswick, or to Earby, there were lots of Carleton people here.
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What was the sort of notice that they could give somebody to get them out of a house?
R - It'd be a week.
Is that right?
R- Of course it would, it'd be a week. There were any amount left, voluntary or got sacked. And when they owned the housing, they owned the land that .. and they owned the mill, what can people do? And a man and a wife with a family, what can they do? They have you by the throat.
Aye ... And would you say that they took advantage of that in the wages?
R - They did, they did take advantage. They just did as they liked. And my youngest brother, he's fairly brainy. I know he is now, he is a good writer and he is clever. And as time went on me mother sort of could afford to let him try for the grammar school, and he got word that he’d passed. But in those days there were only so many places and there were more people for the vacancies than what there were because it wasn't just Carleton, it were all the Skipton area. So he got notice he had to go to somewhere in Skipton for an interview. And they asked him various questions, he answered them satisfactory, and then sort of passed he thought and that was when the man chimed up and he says what does your father do? He said oh I haven't a father, he's dead. And .. how many were there in the family, and he said how many there were, and Oh all right. And that finished it, he hadn't passed. And the schoolmaster, it were a new schoolmaster when my brother were there, a fellow called Ashworth, he told him he'd passed. And he asked him at after, he says How did you go on? He says Oh I got word 1 haven't passed. But – the teacher says - I'm amazed, you had passed. So what caused it, they didn't think he
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were a suitable person to go to Skipton Grammar School, that were all it were, because he wouldn't had been suitably dressed I suppose, for a start, they had to buy their own sport's equipment and all that sort of thing. And there were shopkeepers sons and all the other people sons that were going to Skipton and I suppose they sort of thought he wouldn't be a suitable person to mix with. And he’s told the tale many a time how it happened ... What does your father do? That were t'last question.
What chance do you think there was for a lad from your background ... I'm going to rephrase that question .. Do you think that the chances now of a lad from a working class background are any better than they were then of rising beyond, you know, the station of just being a worker in life? Are the chances any better now do you think?
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R – Well, you can get away from labouring, but not much higher unless you know somebody, it still remains. It's who you know, not what you know that gets you jobs. If my father'd had been living and the chairman of the Conservative Party we'd all have been in better jobs.
Aye, that's a good point, Yes.
R- He was in with them. The school, the postmaster’s son he won one of the best scholarships there were, County Minor, County Major. Immediately he passed, sat for it, and he were a mate of mine and he were no more brainy than any of t'lads, we all played together. But he won this County Minor, got into a bank when he left the grammar school and he got to be the Mayor of Keighley, and of course he's dead. But it just so
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happened that my father died and left me mother a widow with five of us to keep. But if my father had been living we’d have all have been in different jobs.
Would you say that there was any social stigma attached to being, obviously not an orphan, but .. you know, losing your father?
R - Well I don't. In a village you were all alike. It's different living in a village I suppose to being in a town where the toffee nose runs the town as they call it, they think they are superior. But in a village you didn't. You were all going to the village school, and ninety-nine out of the hundred are the working people who were going to the mill, both the father and the mother, mother weaving and father spinner or card room. Because there were no other work only railways and farm work.
Where would the children of the people from the big houses go to school?
R - They went away when they were young, you just used to see them at holidays .
So they wouldn't go to the village school?
R - No, none of them.
So really, the fact that the village seemed such a democratic and egalitarian place, was basically due to the fact that everybody was in the same boat.
R - Yes, we were all poor.
And the ones that weren't in the same ... Yes that's it, aye. So I mean, really you can get a false picture. You see I get the impression from talking to you, and I've no doubt that you'll agree with me, that you regarded.. or, and you still do, you regard village life as .. it was a very happy time for you and it was a very happy thing and a very nice existence. I mean I think you look on it like that don't you?
R - Yes.
But yet when you come to look at it and really examine it, and analyse it, the only thing, the only thing really that made it happy was the fact that nobody was really desperately short because the community was so close that people looked after each other in one way and another .. And the other thing is that everybody was in the same boat so I mean there was…
R – Yes they did. The same level.
There was really nothing to cause anybody dissatisfaction, they couldn't see somebody in the next street who had more than them, everybody was the same. And when you came to think about it .. the level of .. the sort of standard of living that you had, and the standard of expectations that you had in that small village of Carleton, were really very low and probably
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lower than they would have been in a town, a small town even, like Skipton. Do you think that if you'd been living in Skipton, where there was a bigger mix of people, you know, different strata of people, there'd be more opportunity for getting on from school there.
R - Nobody in Skipton had any hold over the people. There were weaving sheds, there were Dewhurst’s Mill, there were the foundry, Skipton Castle owned near all the land, there were no building went on in Skipton as long as Lord Hothfield had hold of it.
Lord .. ?
R - Hothfield. He owned Skipton Castle, he owned Appleby Castle, and he owned ..
How do you spell that, Horace?
R - Hothfield?
Yes.
R - Hothfield. There's streets, Hothfield Terrace in Skipton. But Lord Hothfield owned Skipton Castle and all the land around it down to Silsden. And how far .. well he owned up to the River Aire, Broughton Hall has this side and Lord Hothfield had the other end. And it went down as far as Silsden and then you went up to Embsay and the Duke of Embsay took over, and had all that area, Embsay, Bolton Abbey, Beamsley, Addingham, until Lord Hothfield died, all the estate was sold off Skipton Castle, everything he owned, the lot. And there were no building took place in Skipton until he did die.
But no one man controlled the lot. No.
R – He didn't. And there weren't a certain person waiting for you go to doff at his mill. You had more chance, there were the railways and if you were on the railway there were a better chance of going down to Keighley.
Aye, travel further afield for work.
R - Get on the train and go as an apprentice down there, there were more opportunity, everyway . There were nothing up bank, there were only Gargrave and then Settle. There were nothing up bank, Grassington were just the same, a bit of quarry work at Grassington but Skipton were on a main line and they'd opportunity to get better jobs. And there were more jobs in Skipton, and the schools weren't all church endowed schools, there were more opportunity there, you had more chances.
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Aye, they were board schools, weren't they. Yes.
R - And I know when we talked to lads from Skipton about when we were going to school they were taking altogether different things to what we were doing, you see? All sorts of things that we'd never heard of. Swimming and art classes and there were joinery and metal work, all sorts of things.
That was true in Earby, Alder Hill at Earby. I think they were a very good school in that respect. I've interviewed people that went there, and you know, they had such things as, as you say, joinery and domestic science for the girls, and swimming, sports, cricket. Another thing that I never really asked you much about, and I don't shy away from the subject, 1 do ask people, I remember we got round to underpants but .. When you were, nowadays we are used to children getting sex education at school, and this, that and the other. Well, we think very little about it really but 1 know that the extent of any education in sex 1 had was very limited.
R - A street corner.
Well, I mean, I can tell you a little story about that, I tell this to nearly everybody to show that I was no better than anybody else. I can remember, and I know just exactly whereI1 was at the time, from the place I was in at the time I know exactly how old I was. It was in the cloakroom at Stockport Grammar School, and I didn't go there till I was eleven years old, so I was at least eleven. And I remember arguing with somebody about where babies came from and I was wrong. And I was eleven year old. So .. but mind you, you see I hadn't been reared in the country you see, so I hadn’t the advantage of being amongst animals. I mean, my knowledge of sex was so bloody limited you know, it was unbelievable. But .. you know, you say street corner .. I mean how did you get your education?
R – Well, street corners. And in country places chaps used to walk an entire. [stallion] ...
Yes.
R - And they used to be standing at a certain farm every fortnight, and we knew, we used to be there when the performance took place. We knew what it were all about and then the farmers kept bulls and we knew what were going on and then .. when there were tupping time, we knew all about it. But about girls, well, I tell you it were all out of the street corner.
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Nobody actually took you on one side and said “Now look here Horace ...”
R- No.
No. Well there you are you see, that's another thing that makes me wonder. I mean, I wonder how much better things are now. I'm sure that .. well, I'm absolutely certain that, at their age, these children of mine know far more than I ever did.
R - Yes.
And they are far less inhibited about it as well, which I think is .. well, I think personally it's a good thing. I think that knowledge is always better than ignorance. But it makes you wonder how people of your generation and of course my generation which came later, went on. It makes you wonder how the hell we managed really, doesn't it?
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R- Yes. But my daughter got married from Earby and went immediately to live at Chester. Well, that was a big break, dumped down there and knew nobody, and then to Wrexham, from Wrexham back to a place called Llay, and …
Called?
R - Llay, L 1 a y.
Ah, L 1 a y, that's it, yes, Wales. Welsh, yes.
R - Llay, called it Llay, and then from there to Walkden near Manchester. From Walkden to Mansfield, and now they're moving again she is going into a village, “Let me be back into a village!” Soon after she'd left here and gone to Chester she was scoffing at us living in a village, “There is nothing in Earby!” My wife said to her when she were, last time we saw her when she was saying “Get me get back over the border into Yorkshire, into a village.” My wife said “I thought there were nothing in villages.” She whispered “I've changed me mind.” You see? She's got among all sorts of people, they moved on to an estate of big houses, there's bank managers and there's doctors, there's school masters, there's shopkeepers with big shops and accountants, all sorts of people, all with big heads. And it's one thing that my daughter just can't stand, is what she calls stuck up folk.
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Well one of the things I've learned Horace is that there is roughly the same proportion of good folk to bad folk in any class of life you care to move into, and I seem to move about amongst most of them apart from royalty, and, all I can tell you is that if there is any discrepancy it’s the fact that you'll find more good folk, a better ratio of good folk among what for want of a better term we can call the working classes than you will amongst the upper classes. I think so.
R- Yes. She said, when she goes down into Mansfield and get among the ordinary people they are different altogether. When we go they sort of seem frightened of talking or unbending as if they’d something to hide.
Yes well you see, there you’ve put your finger on it you see, because that's it, it's a defence ...
R - They're frightened of one another.
It's a defence.
R - It is.
Yes, they are all watching each other. It's like, you know Eric Morecambe said, somebody asked him once what frightened him most in this world, and he said "The only thing that frightens me is that some day somebody'll come and ask for it all back.” and I know exactly what he meant. And that's what it is, when people have got to a certain standard, and a certain standard of living and standard of expectations .. the thing that starts to worry them more than anything else is the fact that they might lose what they've got. You know, they seem to think that any slippage in the standard of living is a retrograde step because people nowadays seem to confuse their standard of living with the quality of life, and there's a big difference between the two.
R - Yes. And they're swanking about what they are, my daughter says they're swanking about what they are ... And they are going to do this, and going to do that. Well she's just as much money than any of them, but she doesn't swank, and she cannot stand this swanking about what they are.
Yes, but what will her kids be like?
R - Well, they talk same as their mother does, Yorkshire, she hasn't tried to put it on. I were waiting for a bus one day and there were only a woman stood there and I asked what time were the buses. And she says “Are you Kath's father?” And I says '”Yes, why?” Well, she says “There's only one person round here talks like you, that's Kath.” I says “Yes, broad Yorkshire and we are proud of it.”
Well yes but do you think that, what do you think the chances are of the children perhaps getting, you know, leaning more
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towards the .. you know, the doctors and the bank managers and all the rest of it?
R - Oh yes, they speak nicely, but a woman that my daughter's very friendly with, she said something about it one day, she said “I don't want my children to talk like yours.” And Kath then said “And I don't want mine to talk like yours either!”
Aye .. yes, it's a problem in some ways. Anyway, the thing is that I think we are all right, it's the others!
R- Yes. But her children do speak nicely, they do. Because when they come over here people will say to me “Don't they speak nicely?” Well, I don't notice it, I'm used to them. But my daughter can't stand this falseness, and when I'm with them I get on all right, but not the people round there. I get on all right with them but they always act as if they were frightened they were going to let something slip, and they weren't as big as they were pretending to be.
Aye. Another thing about people like that, and one of the reasons why I like living round here Horace is that I would have great difficulty with the class of people that you are talking about, going and making tapes like these.
R - Yes, you would.
I’d have great difficulty, I could do it but…
R - Because all the time they'd be sorting out have 1 to tell, have I to let on that me father, and me mother live in a Council house?
Yes. Well yes, I'd have great difficulty in getting them to what I call 'open up and start trading'
R – Yes.
And I realise this, but still, I mean, that's really beside the point, because I haven't got that trouble because I'm dealing with blokes like you. But anyway we're getting down towards the end of this tape now. I'm glad we got the chance of making these tapes.
R - Yes. Oh yes it were very nice.
And, I think that they'll be very interesting for somebody in the future, and I'm sure that the coverage we've done of the taping .. I'm sure we’ve done a good job there, we've done as good a job as I could have hoped. Well in fact I'm rather. pleased in some ways that I did it with you and not with Joe, because I would have had great difficulty in getting Joe to open up, I know that, and I wasn't really looking forward to it. But anyway, he decided for his own reasons that he didn't want to do these tapes. Now that's quite all right, that's entirely up to him, but I think we've covered the story of your life fairly well, and we've covered the subject of taping, and after all that's what we set out to do.
R - Yes.
So, what we'll do, I'll thank you very much and we'll end this tape here.
SCG/06 April 2003
5,601 words.