THE FLATLEY DRYER

[plaques]

Capstan laithe setters where particularly prone to this disease by sitting astride the machines as they set them up. The cutting fluid being carcniogenic.

[Stanley]

Two good examples of the same problem.
One surprising one that I came across was the dangers of inhaling the fumes from arc welding. This was due to the fact that you were inhaling vaporised metal and it got really dangerous when welding stainless steel inside SS tanks. Normal materials were bad enough but once in the lungs they oxidised and mixed with the mucus and your lungs could eject them but the problem with stainless was that it didn't oxidise and mix so your lungs retained it and over the years it could build up. The only defence was forced ventilation as the 'Approved' face masks we had then were useless, they would only catch coarse dust.
Dust was another big problem, I one hallucinated for more than 24 hours after cleaning lead based paint off a garden gate with an abrasive disc. I remember going out to dinner with the kids that night and I started rambling and told them a completely spurious story. They knew something was wrong as I was rambling and took me home. I realised later what had happened and reassured them that Dad wasn't losing it. Thank God that these things are recognised today!

[Stanley]

Thinking back over 70 years we were living in a world that was virtually unchanged since the 19th century. This may be why I have had some success in interpreting the history of the period! We were still educated to be cannon and factory fodder, the main factor that governed your progress through life was the level of your parent's wealth and their status in society. Born poor meant that you almost certainly lived poor and the ruling class was virtually unchanged from Feudal times.
This raises an interesting question, after a century of 'progress' how much of this has changed? I have to report that despite the advances, very little. We are still a society of 'Two Nations' just as Disraeli described us.
Perhaps I am suffering from the pessimism of old age, I admit this possibility but have a close look at the evidence and ask yourselves "are we making significant progress?"

[Bodger]

Stanley, did anyone study the effects of the industrial revolution on heredity diseases , i.e. before it started people lived in small circles of habitation, say 20 mile radius, so over previous years there must have been a certain amount of "inbreeding" between local families ?, once industry developed people migrated to find work , this was followed by intermarriage of persons of wider origin, from myself to my g. grandparents there is, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Scottish, Irish, Lincolnshire, Surrey, and Bangalore(British Army) his father of unknown origin at present.

[Stanley]

Bodger, I am sure someone has but I can't point you immediately to a text. What you point out is indeed very important and had large implications in many ways. Even though people didn't understand the mechanisms by which disease was transmitted they understood the value of isolation, think Eyam in Derbyshire. When they migrated to larger communities where industrialisation gave greater opportunities they paid the price in terms of disease caused by overcrowding. The standards of hygiene which had been sufficient in thinly populated villages failed them in the slum properties in the towns.
In terms of inbreeding, again you are right, in earlier times many people lived their lives without ever leaving the home village. Apart from anything else that was where they stood a chance of inheriting land or a house. This close bond first came to my attention when I started to go round the farms with our mobile shop. I soon learned two things, first that you had to be very careful how you referred to neighbours because there was almost certainly a family connection. The second thing was that almost all families had someone in them whose ancestry was never referred to or who suffered from a congenital disease. Many were referred to as 'being away'. I asked John Wilfred Pickard about this in later years and he said my observation was good and that the reason for it was too close breeding and in some cases, incest. Even in the best cases, it still resulted in a restricted gene pool.
What surprised me, a townie, was that in 1960 these effects were so evident and that even then, you met people who never went further than the nearest market town. I once came across a statistic in the US which assessed how far people went from home to find a life partner. The vast majority were under ten miles. I wonder what a survey like that would reveal now?
As a parallel case, think of the very different experience in a seaport. They must have been amongst the first multi-racial communities. It may be at the root that transport links are the explanation.

[Tizer]

Britain had great commercial benefits from being at the forefront of the industrial revolution but it also brought terrible effects on the overall health of the population once steam replaced water and wind power and people moved into town slums. I think this has had a lasting effect on British health through poor diet. In other countries where there was a less pronounced shift from rural to urban the populations have managed to keep a better diet and continued to place a greater value on high quality food.

[Tripps]

So much to speak about here. I don't agree with a lot of what's written, but I'd rather talk
about it than write about it. Too much typing . . . . Several are topics I took up with the intelligentsia at next door's Xmas lunch. I remember a deep discussion comparing the working class then (1950's), and now.

Perhaps I am suffering from the pessimism of old age,

I think maybe there's a bit of that about it - why should you be pessimistic? I think you've got EWS. (Engine Withdrawal Syndrome)

As for the inbreeding - there is some research going on, but not where you might think '

Consanguinity

[Stanley]

The Born in Bradford study is still active I believe.
I note "whilst consanguineous marriage increases the risk of birth defect from 3% to 6%, the absolute risk is still small."" and this agrees with my experience. I have a wonderful mix of races in my genes and have always favoured first cross mongrel dogs because on the whole they are so healthy.
For centuries animal breeders have known that the best way to 'improve' a breed is to selectively mate based on performance, attributes and conformation inside a closed herd. No new blood admitted. In my days with cattle I came across Ramsay Ayrshires from a herd owned by two brothers whose farm was on an island. They ran a closed herd and were famous for producing some of the best Ayrshire cattle in the world. Problem was that sometimes the system threw up a dud and the nearest I ever came to being killed by a beast was when Richard bought one that turned out to be barking mad. We had to send it back and it was shot in the slaughterhouse yard at Ayr, it took 3 .303 bullets in the head to fell it.
This is the bovine equivalent of the relations who were 'away' that I noted on my travels round the farms.
Do you remember the old story about the lad who was courting a lass and his dad took him on one side and told him she was his step sister as he had fathered her in an illicit relationship? The lad went to his mother for advice and she told him to go ahead, "Your Daddy ain't your daddy son but he don't know!"

[Stanley]

One thing that has changed completely in the last 50 years has been seasonality of fruit and vegetables. Unlike today, we went through a winter with no salad veggies as they were all local and we had to wait until Spring for our first salad of the year and I can tell you that after a long hard winter it was an event and tasted wonderful.
As late as the 1960s this still applied to soft fruit like strawberries which came into season early in June and lasted until July. This had a big effect on us at the dairy because as the strawberries came in the demand for cream shot up and as I was tanking milk at the time that meant our work load went up because in addition to tanking milk in to the dairies making the cream, we had to tank the skimmed milk out to dairies like Settle Creamery who had the equipment to dry the skim and make the powder that was used in cattle food and the food processing industry. We had the same effect at Xmas when, for different reasons, cream demand shot up again.
I suspect that these peaks are a thing of the past as the import of soft fruit by air means that it is available all year round. Is this a good thing? I suppose so but being old fashioned I preferred the seasonality, the produce tasted so much better because we had been deprived.

[Stanley]

Yesterday reminds me of another modern phenomenon, the insistence that the consumer has to have 'choice'. Again I am going to sound very old fashioned but there was much to be said for the days when we had very little choice, life was much more simple. I have often wondered why we need multiple choices for butter or margarine. The only places we had real choice in food was at the butcher's or the greengrocers.
I suppose it started with multiple competing brands of tinned food and jams but soon broadened out into everything. I realise that it's a necessary component of competitive manufacturing but regret the amount of choice we have now which can be confusing. I know, I am completely out of step with the world......

[Tizer]

I agree that excessive choice causes more trouble than benefit but we do want some choice. Besides our local butcher and baker we shop at a Tesco and a Sainsbury's supermarket. There are many products that we will buy from one and not the other because of our preferences.

[chinatyke]

I agree that excessive choice causes more trouble than benefit but we do want some choice. Besides our local butcher and baker we shop at a Tesco and a Sainsbury's supermarket. There are many products that we will buy from one and not the other because of our preferences.

We have at least 7 supermarkets within a 1 km radius of our home. All competing for business. The latest one to open was offering approx 2.5kg cabbages at a penny each, truck loads of them, our chickens did well last week. Another one gave you 10 free eggs when you spent over a few quid.

[Stanley]

Ah China, the worker's paradise!
I agree that some choices are good but still think that too many is confusing. My choice of shopping venues is governed by which is the closest and the urge to support independent businesses in the town.
Some 'choice' is illusory. Take rail travel. despite the supposed benefits of privatisation you still have effectively no choice, you have to use the service that serves your area. Just the same as when they were state-owned. The difference is that in those days all the rail infrastructure, locos and rolling stock were built in this country giving employment to many thousands of people.All right, they ran at a loss and needed subsidising but on the whole this was better value than today. We subsidise far more than in the days of BR, have less control and the management is fragmented and not in the hands of rail professionals with many years of experience. The 'benefit' of this goes to the shareholders, not the travelling public.
Every time 'choice' fails and a franchise has to be taken in house the efficiency rises, subsidy falls and overall customer satisfaction rises. So what does the government do? I'll leave the answer to that question to you.....

[Stanley]

I've commented on this before but as you get older you become invisible in some ways. I've been about for over 80 years and in the course of that journey have learned quite a lot. People tend to forget that and I often think when looking at today's youngsters that they are at the beginning of their journey and quite rightly, when they look at someone like me I am just another old person. They have no conception of what I have learned over the years and the sights I have seen. Think about just one aspect of this, your eyes. Think of what they have seen over the years and marvel at the fact that so many of those images are stored in your brain. Mention whales breeching and my mid immediately goes back to a boat in the Indian Ocean off Freemantle and I see the hump backed whale flying through the air after coming up from a dive. That's just one memory and there are thousands! Someone once said to me that it was impossible to imagine a number like 94,000,000 (we had touched on the distance to the sun). I told him I could, all I had to do was imagine the number of cat's eyes I had seen in millions of miles on the road. 94,000,000 was no problem!
So if you are young and you meet someone who is older, remember this before you discount them as 'old' and therefore of no consequence.
(That was a self-pitying post wasn't it.....)

[chinatyke]

They have no conception of what I have learned over the years and the sights I have seen.

I've just come back from a journey where my friend and I used the underground Metro system several times. A few times, my friend and I counted the number of people sitting interacting with their mobile phones. It was always between 80 and 100% of them. We made comment on what would they do without them and did they realise what was happening around them? Sorry, Stanley, the world has changed since your heyday but in many ways it is not for the better.

[Stanley]

You're absolutely right China. I often have the same thought. My mind works in late 19th and early 20th century mode. Great for understanding history but not much help with today!
I saw a little girl (5 years old?) in the back street a couple of days ago playing with her mates. She stopped skipping to consult her smart phone..... Am I qualified enough to have an opinion on this? In many ways I live in a foreign country.......

[Tizer]

One of my relatives got a surprise when her 13-year-old daughter came home and said she'd opened a bank account. How do they manage it without a passport, driving licence, energy bill etc? No wonder youngsters are getting trapped by the `county lines' drug pushers wanting to `wash' money through their bank accounts.

[Stanley]

I wonder how many parents get equally nasty shocks? I remember when Candy Crush first appeared on the horizon I questioned how they could make money. We know now that it is by selling add-ons and if a child gets hold of their parents credit cards they can use the details to buy them. I have seen reports of some quite amazing consequences of this and don't doubt that this is just the tip of a very large iceberg!

[Stanley]

Sickness benefit used to be commonly known as 'The Lloyd George' and unemployment benefit was always called the Dole. Labour Exchanges, (Introduced by Winston Churchill) was also called the Dole.
When old age pensions were first introduced in 1908 they were paid at the Post Office and anyone over 70 years old got 5/- a week (couples got 7/6) as long as their annual income was below £31 per annum. Many of the recipients had no birth certificates or proof of age. The Night of the Big Wind in 1839 was the most devastating storm ever recorded in Irish history. Known in Gaeilge as “Oíche na Gaoithe Móire”. The question asked was whether a claimant could remember The Big Wind and this was accepted as proof of age. It was only when it was realised that a higher proportion of claimants in Ireland were successful in getting the pension than in England Wales and Scotland that the authorities realised that the word had spread, if you claimed to remember the Big Wind you got five bob a week for nothing. The 'Big Winders' were investigated more closely and many of them lost the pension. An early form of benefit fraud!

[Stanley]

When I worked out of West Marton Dairy we were, like most essential workers, on a very low wage, 15p an hour. However we had the benefit of working under a Wages Board which gave rises as inflation struck and ensured that you got sick pay, holiday pay and overtime rates. The Wages Councils were brought in by the Labour Government in 1945 and finally abolished by the Tories in 1986 under Margaret Thatcher. By that time I was self-employed so it didn't affect me too badly but looking back this was the start of the gradual fall-back in wage rates in that they weren't adjusted for inflation. Today we can see the state of the wages market and forgive me if I am biased but I believe the loss of the protection of the Councils was a tragedy for the workers.

[Stanley]

I have to go back to food rationing under an enlightened administration who were advised by acknowledged experts like Sir Jack Drummond. We had no 'choice' we ate what the government made available. The result was that we emerged after the war as what some have described as 'The last healthy generation', in far better condition overall than in 1939 when the war started.
Today my attention was drawn to THIS. I have never heard of Spirulina but it is based on algae and it brings home the fact that with the pressure on the world's resources we may be forced once again to eat what is available. I hope it turns out to be as successful as rationing!

[Stanley]

I posted some pictures of home-fed bacon this morning and I was reminded of why I never bought the hysterical criticism of saturated fat and cholesterol. The 'Industrial Revolution' was fuelled by good fat and cholesterol and besides that, God put cholesterol in eggs and mother's milk so if the critics were right, He or She got it wrong!
I often think that if home fed bacon was on sale in the supermarkets instead of the pickled pork that passes for bacon today, nobody would buy it! I have always said that this is a measure, not of what was good for us, but what makes the most profit. The same applies to offal and the cheaper cuts of meat. When did you last see oxtail or neck end chops from lambs in the Cathedral of Choice?
We may have had 'less choice' in the old days but what was available was natural food, not the modified versions we get today. Thank God that it looks as though that tide is turning now but the manufacturers are still up to their old tricks of maximising profit. Funny thing is that their products cost more. The moral is clear, buy natural food and 'process' it yourself. We used to call it cooking......

[Stanley]

I watched last nights exposure of the activities of the food delivery companies and reflected that as the take-away shops come under more pressure that will be forced to either raise prices or cut back even more on the quality of the ingredients they use.
80 years ago we had 'fast food', it was a staple for mill workers on 12 hours a day. The difference was that it was then pie shops, bakeries, shops that sold bowls of soup and stew and of course the fish and chip shop. The crucial fact was that in an era where there was no developed food chain like we have today, these shops sourced their ingredients from the same suppliers that were used for home cooking but in bulk at wholesale prices. Fish was delivered daily by rail with the exception of Monday as there had been no catch landed over the weekend. Fish and chip shops all closed on Mondays for this reason, there was no refrigeration only packing in ice.
That reminds me that after Matt Harley's dream of a public bath on Sagin Hill up to the Croft was scuppered by the Council refusing to lay a main and supply him with adequate water, after I think a brief period as a billiard hall it was taken over by an electrician who ran an ice-making business there.
The bottom line is that even though there were no official schemes of 'star-ratings' for the food shops, on the whole they sold clean nutritious food. Would that we could have the same trust in fast food today. I'm afraid I wouldn't trust them to brew tea!

[plaques]

When things came in tins. Two examples from my garage. Ideal for keeping small screws etc in.

P1150025.JPG

P1150026.JPG

[Stanley]

I have old tobacco, KP Nuts and cocoa tins doing the same job P.
You could get pipe tobacco in 1/4lb tins and I favoured them because in the case of Bruno especially there were more of the 'bird's eyes' in the tins than in the packets so it was better tobacco. I also have plastic sweet jars, they were throw away packaging and so you could get them for nowt off the shop. Today I still tend to save things like plastic Swarfega jars with screw tops because they are so useful if you are dismantling something and have to care for lots of small parts.
There used to be a ready market for clean 140lb feed bags made of Jute. The heavier hire sacks had a deposit on them so they were always sent back to the Hirer, very often they were railway sacks.
In the early days that led eventually to the use of containers, the railways provided a service for freight where they provided a large stillage and a tarpaulin and you stacked and packed your goods in the factory and the railway picked them up using the ubiquitous Scammel Scarab and automatic coupling trailers.



My friend John Ingoe had one.

They were a peculiar little beast, nobody else made anything like them but thousands were used by the railway companies as they could turn on a sixpence and you could couple up the trailer without getting out of the cab. This made them a very efficient and fast way of dealing with local deliveries. The railways developed a system of small containers that fitted the trailers, they could be loaded by crane and were the first true containers.