This is tape 78/A1/01.
The informant is Arthur Entwistle who is a retired engineer who now lives at Stratford-on Avon but was born in Barnoldswick and left the town in I think the 1930's. He is 70 years old and he's staying with me for a week. He's a personal friend of mine actually but I want to interview him for his knowledge of the town in those days and also the reasons why he left the town when everybody else was going into textiles. Now one thing about Arthur, he's just had an operation for the removal of one lung. and has lung cancer, so he's very, very softly spoken. I shall do the best I can but we shall have to see how we go on with these tapes.
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 78/AL/01
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 17th OF SEPTEMBER 1978 AT HEY FARM, BARNOLDSWICK. THE INFORMANT IS ARTHUR ENTWISTLE, RETIRED ENGINEER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Arthur Entwistle at home.
You’ll find this is a very relaxed thing to do. I’m not, this isn't studio recording we’re not bothered if the cat farts under the bed, we're not bothered about that at all. What we want is the information and funnily enough as you start to get relaxed and it starts to come out it gets so that it is to all intents and purposes a studio recording. I think so anyway. Anyway that's my tale, I'll start now. How old are you Arthur?
R - Seventy one this month, 24th of September.
And you were born..?
R - 1907. 24th of September.
24th of September 1907.
R - 1907 yes.
And where were you born?
R - Born in Barnoldswick. I was born in Market Street, No.9 and lived there until the war broke out.
Yes.
R - I don't know whether that's relevant or not.
Oh yes, yes we'll get round to that. I shall get round to that. You're alreight Arthur. Market Street, which is Market Street?
R - Well, you know where the Ivory Hall Club Is? Well If you went down that side street from the Ivory Hall Club, say you was going from here you'd go down a little slope wouldn't you then there's a succession of streets running into Newtown.
That's it.
R - Well there’s Orchard Street and Market Street.
That's it aye and Garden Street an all.
R - Well Market Street in my early days. The only recollection, one vivid recollection I have, it was one Christmas, I had two aunts died and buried in the same week.
Yes.
R - Christmas week.
Yes well we'll get round to that, you’ll be surprised what you will remember about that before you've finished. Anyway, how many years did you live in the house that you were born in, that’s at Market Street?
(50)
R - Not many years, as a matter of fact to be quite honest about it I can't remember myself living there. I can only remember my grandmother living in that street if you understand what I mean.
Yes that's it, so the family moved when you were fairly young.
R - The family moved when I was fairly young. I don’t know whether you want to know the first recollection of where I lived.
Yes, which is the first house you remember?
R - Well the first house I remember has disappeared now. It was at the bottom of Manchester Road which many years later became a barber's shop. But I remember being frightened by the first motor lorry I ever saw.
Now this house that used to be a barber's shop, that ud be the house that's, it's a newsagents now is it? Next to the Seven Stars.
R- No it’s disappeared.
Whereabouts was it then?
R - Well you know where they've cut the corner off at the bottom of Manchester Road onto Church Street? They've cut that corner off.
Yes, that's it. yes.
R - Well there was a barbers shop there and houses. And that's where I first remember. I was only quite young, I know I ran into the house screaming and the vivid thing I remember about that was, those days the wheels were wooden spokes with a hub cap like they have on the old cars.
Aye.
R- A brass cap, and that were the thing that frightened me.
(5 mins)
Aye. So how old would you be when you were living in that house?
R - I should be about two years old.
Oh well that's not so long. And how long did you live in that house there?
R - Well a number of years. The time factor didn't seem to mean a lot to us when we were that age, and there are only certain things in life give you a vivid remembrance. The second one was being taken to the doctors on Jepp Hill where the town hall was or is, to have a boil lanced off me backside. I was so young, in those days it wasn't customary to breech a boy until he was about four or just prior to going to school, so he was dressed in petticoat's like a girl. That was a painful recollection, ‘cause as I say I went to the doctors to have this boil lanced. Do you want to know where I moved from there?
Yes well I’ll keep you going with questions. Now have you any idea why the family moved from Market Street to the bottom of Manchester Road?
R - No 1 haven’t.
No it's all right if you haven't that's....
R- I have a surmise which may be incorrect and may be doing an injustice but there was a question of arrears of rent. I don’t know.
Aye, well that's, well I mean that's common but as I say that doesn’t matter. Now what was the next house you moved into?
R - We moved down into Twenty Row. (Wellhouse Street)
(100)
Which is Twenty Row?
R- Well, you go down Wellhouse Road and there's your Avenues on your left hand side and then you turn up and you can go on to Rainhall Road. And then there's streets running along there that's 19 Row and 20 Row.
That's the same row that the Co-op Hall is on.
R- Possibly yes.
That's it yes. And how old would you be when you moved into Twenty Row?
R - I should say four years old.
Aye. And how long did you stop in that house?
R- We stopped in that house until the beginning of 1914.
So you'd be about six year old. So you’d only been in that house about two years.
R- Six. I was going to school.
Aye, you'd only be in that house about two year then.
R - That's all,
Where did you move to from Twenty Row?
R -Well we moved down to what they commonly call China Town. I'm trying to think of the name of the street which eludes me at the moment.
That's right.
R – It’s the last street going down Gisburn Street. [Colin Street] (1912)
Yes.
R - The last row of houses. And there was no more built there because war broke out.
That’s it, and how long did you live in that house down there?
R- We lived in that house two years because me dad joined up on the day after war was declared for some reason or other. The day after war was declared he joined up immediately and he thought it would be better if me mother moved near to where his father and mother lived. For what reason I don't know. One can't say it was for mutual protection because there was no danger to civilians then. But anyway we moved to Padiham in the same street as his father lived in. (1914) Well I say we moved to Padiham, we moved to Hapton first, a little village just outside, and as soon as a house became vacant in Padiham, what was called the Green, we moved there. And why I remember so much about that is I was sent to a Catholic School and being moved about, young as I was, every fresh school that I went to I had to have a fight on the first day I went to school to establish whether I were duff or not.
And how long did you live at Padiham?
R- Well we lived in Padiham until early 1917 and I think
(150) (10 mins)
there was some domestic upheaval. At my age at that time these things don't become apparent but I think the old man suspected that mother had another chap but the truth of the matter was he’d made an alliance with another woman and he were just trying to make trouble. ‘Cause I remember him promising me a wrist watch if I told him certain things I couldn't tell him because I didn’t know if you follow what I mean.
Yes.
R - And that would be 1917. The result was a family disagreement with his father, my grandfather. Its an amusing thing, I might just put this in, symptomatic of the times. The old man, it was his second wife and in those days of course they had the coal man coming and the clothing club man coming, they had the rent man coming and other small petty collectors every week. And times being what they were, they'd get the single bed downstairs and buy the old chap a couple of pints and get him to be in bed while the collectors had come, he was an invalid. As soon as the collectors had all gone, back up stairs went the bed and off to the pub went the old man to spend his earnings. Anyway, however, we came back to Barnoldswick and we got into a house in Orchard Street, very primitive. There was one room downstairs, there was one bedroom upstairs and the secondary bedroom, if you can visualise a bedroom with half a roof or loft as you might term it. Me sister and I had to go up this specially made ladder and we slept in the loft, and then the old man he got, well 1 wouldn't say wounded, he was invalided home with trench foot. That was very early 1918 and he spent very nearly a year in Keighley Military Hospital.
That house in, what was it Orchard Street.
R - Orchard Street.
How long did you stop there?
R- We didn't stop long after me dad came home, well I say came out of the army, when he was invalided over to the hospital, 'cause we never knew whether he might have to go back to the war but we got this house, number 7. St James Square
(200)
and lived there until 1924/5. 1925 from 1918.
So that were the house you were in longest actually.
R- That were the house we lived in longest.
And you went into that house, what did you say, 1918?
R- 1918.
So you'd be ten year old roughly.
R - Yes.
So you'll have a fair few recollections about that house in St. James' Square won't .you?
R- Oh yes. Definitely.
Well what I’m going to ask you some questions now. I'll be getting on to some questions about the home, you know, and the house. Well they’ll be about that house in St. James' Square. What number was it?
R- Seven.
They'll be about 7 St. James’ Square. Now that’s just to keep you orientated you know, and then. Because you did shift about quite a lot, but that's quite a good age that, ten year old in 1918 you see. Now where was your father born?
R- Verbally, from verbal statements he was born at Mill Hill near Blackburn.
Aye. And why did he come here?
R- Now, he served his time with Howard and Bullough.
(15 mins)
As an engineer.
R- As a, well as an engineer yes and he was always a man with a violent and fierce temper. And what one would call the overseer or charge hand today, he fell foul of this fellow, and I think this fellow, as was customary in those days, thumped him. Anyway the old man waited. As you know the sanitation in those days wasn't very brilliant. There was a row of cubicles outside, little buildings with a door on, a tub and a trap door at the back to drag the tub out, a limited amount of privacy. I know this again is recollecting an anecdote that the old man told about this affair after the charge hand had thumped him. He waited cunningly until this bloke went to the toilet and of course in those days all the machinery was driven from one central engine by shafting and belting and they used to use on the belts to stop 'em slipping what they called 'Black Jack'. Now from what I can gather this was not exactly like tar, more cottony but still adhesive. I know the old chap waited until he went to the toilet,
(250)
the story goes, and he’d marked out which one he went to. He craftily opened the back door a little bit and he got his 'Black jack' stick and tin and he just slapped this bloke on the backside and his privates and buggered off and joined the navy. When I say he joined the navy, he joined the Royal Marines. That were before, that was when he was a young lad as you might say, young fella.
That's it aye, So he had to leave Blackburn then there’d be no work.
R- Well he went and enlisted straight away. I mention this because you say how did he come to leave Mill Hill and come to Barlick. Well when he came out of the Royal Marines he came to Barnoldswick for some reason or another, where of course eventually he met and married me mother and that's how he settled down in this town and held various occupations. Those days if you'd eighteen and six (18/6d) a week wage, I'm speaking of before the first war, I'm goings back now before the war, you wasn't doing so badly. He made this from bicycle repairs and that. Newsome's used to have a shop at bottom of Jepp Hill. This is next to that paper shop now.
Yes. We'll get round to jobs in a minute Arthur. Now where was your mother born?
R- My mother was born at Low Moor, Clitheroe.
Aye. What was her date of birth?
R - Oh dear, no.
What year did she die?
R- I know this might sound funny to you but 1 can't remember.
It's quite common Arthur, it's quite common.
R- The only thing 1 do remember about it is that she died on the day which would have been my birthday but the year....
That’s quite common, don’t let it worry you. You'd be surprised it might come back to you. Did you have any brothers and sisters?
R - Well, yes. If the family as a whole had survived there would have been thirteen children.
(300)
Now that's it, you just hold on a minute now. This again is common, how many confinements did you mother have?
R - Well It's quite possible she could have had fourteen or fifteen if you count miscarriages.
No that's confinements, that's how many times she was actually.,
R- Actually confined, thirteen.
(20 mins)
Oh I see. She had a couple of miscarriages. I was wrong there Arthur. So now, of the confinements how many children survived? How many survived the first two or three days, that got to be any age at all?
R- The first one died, be about seven months old, and there again I'm speaking from recollecting what our parents said. This child apparently was abnormally intelligent, uncannily so. If I'd believe what my mother and father said, this child could pick with one finger a tune out on the piano. But he died as a result of vaccination.
So how many children, let's get at it from the other end. How many children actually survived?
R - How many children survived, four of us that's all,
Four, and roughly what age did the others die at?
R- Well an far as I can remember it varied between six months old and two years old.
Yes. That's fairly common again Arthur. Have you any idea what the causes of death were? You said the first one was vaccination?
R- Well, my recollection, I could say partially malnutrition.
Were any of them born after you? Whereabouts did you come in the family?
R- There was one born before me, the one I've just mentioned who could play on the piano.
So in actual fact you are the oldest surviving child.
R- I’m the oldest surviving.
The oldest survivor of four children.
R- Yes. My sister was two years younger than I.
What was her name?
(350)
R- There was children born in the intervening years, the war of course upset things a little bit. After the war I had another brother born, Owen.
What was your sisters name?
R - Evelyn Maude.
And what was your brothers name?
R- Owen was born just as 1 started work.
That's it, and then there’ll be another one.
R- And then there was Cyril born two years after him. That was the last child born in the family.
So that's three brothers and one sister. [in the family]
R - Yes.
Reight. When you were a child can you ever remember any relations living with you in the house?
R- Not really, no.
We're talking, remember we're talking about the house in St. James Square now.
R- Yes. Ah now then, relations living with us in the house. Well not until 1 was about eighteen and we moved, we had a relations come to live with us, a cousin.
When you say a cousin was it male or female?
R- Male cousin.
Yes, why did he come to live with you?
R- On the distaff side. He was local, a local boy. He was born in Barnoldswick like I was but his mother, she wasn't over educated but she had a reputation of getting lots of girls out of trouble. In other words what is now considered a highly profitable profession of creating an abortion. Which she got many a girl out of trouble and of course finally, and it does happen in these cases, something went wrong and she was sent to Strangeways prison.
What was her name Arthur?
R- Margaret Macdonald.
Any idea where she lived?
R- Yes she lived at the top of Wapping, what I believe, is it Esp Lane?
Yes that's it.
R- She lived down there. Well I should say till she practically died there. I left this area a good few years ago as you remember.
Yes that's it. What year would that be about? When she went to Strangeways?
R- Let's think again. 1926 approximately.
Good. You see you're doing well on your dates. You'll be surprised..
R- The family was split up. One boy came to live with us and the girl and another boy went with other members of the family for the terms that she was in prison.
(25 mins)
And how long was he with you?
R- Well he was still there after I got married, which would be 1928 so he was there a year or two.
1928 you got married.
R - Yes.
Now, did the family ever have any lodgers?
Not in my living memory, although I heard that my dad had his brother lodging with him for a while until he got married. Which was probably before I was thought of or I came on the scene.
What was your fathers job when you were born do you know?
R- Well on my birth certificate he's listed as a gas fitter. Because in those days there was no electric in the town of course and it wasn't every house that was connected with gas. I'm happen jumping ahead a little bit but 1 remember as a boy going with me dad and helping him to put gas in. Lots of houses only had gas down stairs.
And when you were In St. James Square your father ud come back from the war. What was his job then?
R- He went working on the railway as a porter.
How long did he stay as a porter on the railway?
R – Oh, 1919..I should say about six or seven years at the most.
So that ud be from 1919 to about 1926. 1926/27?
R- When was the great strike. General strike, he was working on the railway then and I think he finished just afterwards. I think it was 1926 the great strike, the general strike.
(450)
When the miners and everything came out. ‘Cause I remember there wasn't a saw to be bought in the town and there wasn't an axe because everybody was going out chopping fencing down and chopping trees down.
Did he have any other jobs after that?
R – What, me father?
Yes. When he finished being a porter what did he do then?
R- He went in the factory, cotton factory.
Which one?
R - Let me see, I think it were Edmondson's, Fernbank, which is cotton trade.
What was he doing there, do you know?
R- Sweeping.
That ud be about 1927.
R- Thereabouts. Yes it would be 1927 yes.
1927. That's very early for sweepers, very early for sweepers.
R- There were sweepers there then,
Yes. As I say it was very early for sweepers though that date. Now when he was working for the railway he’d be working for the Barlick Railway of course wouldn't he.
R- That's right. Well the LMS.
[It would be the Midland Railway when Arthur’s dad first went to work for them. The London Midland and Scottish Railway was formed in 1923 following the Railways Act of 1921. The Barnoldswick Railway had been run by the Midland from its inception, opened Feb 8th 1871. Closed to passengers 27th September 1965 and to freight on 1st August 1966 but was taken over by Midland in 1898.]
And he was not only stationed here, he graduated to be good enough to be a relief porter and if someone was on holiday at a remote country station such as Appleby, places like that, Ribblehead where you had a station master, one porter who was clerk. ticket collector and what have you he [went as a relief] I remember because I spent one jolly good holiday at Ribblehead while he was working on the railway, watching the Flying Scotsman come up and come down.
We'll get round to that an all. Now what was your mother’s job Arthur,
R- Weaver all her life. A cotton weaver all her life, yes.
(500) (30 mins)
Can you remember any of the firms that she worked at?
R- Well the names unfortunately would elude me.
Well the mills then, that'll be good enough Arthur.
R- Butts, Pickles, sheeting shop down at Westfield, Hartley Edmondson’s at Fernbank. Sheeting shop over the Coates and I think she finished her weaving days at Edmondson’s Fernbank.
So was she weaving while you were young, while you were being brought up. Let's say St. James Square.
R- Well, we’re going back before St James Square if you want to know about her weaving.
R- Because it was customary in those days for women in the cotton trade, I can remember being carried out to be looked after by my grandmother, wrapped in a shawl, before six o'clock in a morning. To be left with me grandmother for to be nursed while me mother was working, at Coates Mill then. And I remember her telling that the icy conditions were such and so bad that they used to have to take their clogs off at the bottom of Coates Bridge and go up more or less on their hands and knees. Working conditions as far as I can recollect were not too favourable for the textile workers. ‘Cause I remember vividly being carried out. Why I remember it is the sparkling frost of the street lamps which seemed to be deeply impressed on my memory, snuggled in the warmth against my mothers breast and under the shawl.
(550)
And so if she was taking you out to a child minder and you were the eldest of the survivors she'd also have the younger children to take out as well.
R- I might sound to be boasting here when I say my memory goes back quite a long way, and at that time I don’t think my sister was born. I could only have been about eighteen months old.
Yes, so can you remember how long would it be after, say the birth of your sister or one of your brothers, before your mother went back to work?
R- Well, economically it was essential. While grandmother was living of course she was always there as child minder. But I've seen, I've know me mother be back at work no more than a month after the termination of the pregnancy.
Would she be breast feeding her children then?
R- I can’t recollect her breast feeding any of the children. She might have done but not to my knowledge. Well, put it this way, I don’t remember seeing her breast feeding.
That'll do Arthur you can’t do any better than that. How old was she when she died?
R- She would be about sixty four.
Now apart from you, because obviously I know that you left the town but did any other members of the family leave the town. When did you leave the town Arthur? What date was it about, roughly?
R - When I left Barnoldswick? In my more adult years as you might say, after I was married. I left Barnoldswick on New Years day in 1939.
Yes. Now did any of your brothers or sisters leave the town?
R- Not at that date, not until I got settled and then it was inevitable of course, I had one brother that was serving his time at 7/6d a week, and I got him a job and he came to live with Amy and I.
(600)
Who was that?
R- Cyril and then we got Owen down later. Owen was an apprenticed bricklayer and he worked on the new school on the New Road.
What was your sister's name?
R- Emily Maude.
(35 mins)
Did she stay in the town or did she move down as well.
R- She married a boy in Nelson and lived in Nelson until her husband was called up into the navy. When he joined the navy she came down to live with me mother and father and unfortunately her husband never came back.
Now when you say came down to live with mother and father, did they move down to the Midlands as well?
R- As I said, once I got settled not only did my brothers come down prior to my mother and father coming down. I had them and then me mother and father come down and I also had an uncle and aunt came down.
Aye. So there was a wholesale exodus of the Entwistle family from Barlick!
R- That's right. And some Fishwicks.
And Fishwicks aye, Fishwicks. That was your mothers maiden name was it?
R- No, me sisters married name.
Aye. Narthen, this house in St James Square, how many bedrooms did it have?
R- Two.
What other rooms were there?
R - There was two rooms downstairs with a very small kitchen. When I say a small kitchen it was a queer house because
(600)
one room was triangular, which the bedroom above of course would be. And part of the triangular room downstairs which was on the other side of the staircase, which was an open staircase by the way, was this small kitchen. The other room which would have been considered to be a parlour in the polite term in those days, was me fathers work shop. I remember he got permission to have, well he had gas mains laid on and in his workshop he had a gas engine running.
So that means you lived in the kitchen..
R- Well we lived in the living room downstairs, one room.
Well that's, you called that the kitchen didn't you.
R- Well you could call it a kitchen.
Yes, that's the triangular room you were talking about.
R- No that’s just off one side.
Oh I see, there's two rooms downstairs.
R- Yes.
So one of them is your fathers workshop.
R- Yes which was the remainder of the triangular portion.
Oh I see, that's it aye. Narthen which room did you have your meals in?
R- Well we had the common living room, the big living room where the fireplace was.
And where did your mother do the cooking?
R- It was in [that room] there was a big old-fashioned iron range.
That's an iron range with an oven and the side boiler?
R- Oven and side boiler yes.
Back boiler?
R- No back boiler no.
And where did your mother do the washing?
R- Well she did it in the kitchen such as it was with a dolly tub and posser and the old wringing machine.
No bathroom?
R- No bathroom, none whatever.
So where did you have a bath?
R- Well when we had a bath you put a tin bath down in front of the fire and had a bath when the others had gone to bed and vice versa.
Aye, what night Arthur?
R- Well invariably Friday nights.
Do you know, everybody had a bloody bath Friday night! [Arthur and Stanley laugh]
R- Well invariably I should say Friday night yes.
The lavatory, outside..?
R- Narthen here we are, now the houses in St. James Square, which are still there, although there was a demolition order on them two years ago, but I digress. They were back to back houses and funnily enough the houses which were the other side of ours, they had to come round into this common yard where there were three houses. There was our house number 7 and one next door, I forget the number and another, and there was a block of three lavatories, similar to what I described earlier on. The primitive type.
There were a block of three toilets there. Now those ud be dry toilets?
R- Those tubs.
That's it, tubs dry, that's it aye. Emptied once a week if you were lucky.
R- Two families joined to one toilet. There were six houses, three back to back. So there was three toilets and six families joined at three toilets.
That's it yes. So if you were lucky you got a clean family sharing at yours.
R- Yes, not too bad.
Aye that's it. And how were they emptied?
R- Oh, thereby hangs a tale. In those days, to be impolite, they used to come round on Mondays in our area anyway. Mind you it wasn't uncommon in the town in those days to be these dry lavatories as we might call them, and to be vulgar, the old shit cart used to come round Monday. And you can believe me all the bedroom windows were closed for quite a hell of a long way round.
(750)
R- And I can still remember 'em sprinkling pink powder, some sort of disinfectant stuff in the tubs. And never washed out. And it was a thing we grew to accept, never thought anything about it. Incidentally, the first flush toilet that I ever saw was when I went to an uncle at Manchester and I thought it was a bloody miracle.
And did your house have piped water?
(40 mins)
R - Yes. We did have piped water.
Cold water, no hot water system.
R- Yes.
That's it, and had you got a stair carpet?
R- No.
Wooden stairs or stone stairs.
R - Wooden stairs.
Aye it's an open staircase you said so didn't you.
R - Yes.
Can you remember if the neighbours had stair carpets?
R- I can only remember one neighbour that would have.
So would you say that, so you'd say that in that area stair carpets were probably uncommon.
R - Well I should say they were a luxury.
Yes that's it. How about floor coverings in the rest of the house?
R - Well floor covering. It was a stone floor and the best thing that we could afford in those days if I remember right was coconut matting which would cover a large amount of the floor. It had one fault it let all the damned dirt through underneath. And very often a home made peg rug in front of the fire.
Aye. Who made the peg rug?
R- Mother very often, but kids used to help an all.
(800)
Yes. How about curtains?
R- Well curtains, you had the usual lace curtains and whatever other curtains you could afford to buy.
Blinds?
R- Well very often made out of cotton from the factory. and dyed.
Were yours made out of cotton from the factory?
R - I think they were yes, and dyed.
How about upstairs, any floor coverings upstairs?
R- No, if we were lucky we got as one would say a threadbare rug that had served it’s best purposes downstairs. At the side of your bed just so you wouldn't have cold feet.
How about oilcloth?
R- I remember me mother’s room, mother and father’s room, being covered with oilcloth because at that house to go to my bedroom I had to go through mother’s and father’s. Distempered walls, there were no such luxury as wallpaper.
Aye that's it. Can you remember any families round about there not having curtains at all?
R – No. In spite of the poverty in the town a certain amount of pride and decorum. However they managed it, they did have some sort of covering for the windows.
Did they donkeystone the doorsteps?
R- Yes very much so. The yellow and the white and if I might digress, this is still whilst I’m living in St James Square. I'm sent to Blackburn every Saturday morning for lessons, music lessons, and I remember walking down the streets of Blackburn which would be a revelation to-day
(650)
because they vied with one another, the designs that could be put on the window cills and the door steps, and even on the pavement outside the houses. In those days, without exaggeration, you could have eaten your food off the floor because everybody swilled and scrubbed outside and donkey stoned. It was a pride, it was a thing that you, sort of a pride. Not that it was a great achievement but it was a sort of keeping up appearances.
That's it. I often tell the tale, I have been told, I don't know whether it's right or not but I can quite believe it, that there was one street in Ashton-under-Lyne where they even black leaded the tram lines.
R- That 1 can quite well believe.
And as I say I've no proof that it's right but I can believe it.
R- I could well believe it too because Lancashire people were very, very proud people.
Yes. Can you ever remember sand on the floor?
R- Well when it comes to sanded floors, the only sanded floors I remember is the Dog just down here.
Aye. Greyhound Hotel.
R- Yes, in a pub. It was quite common for a lot of the pubs that had stone floors, they were nearly always sanded and not only that but round the bar and at strategic points there was always these cuspidors or more commonly called spittoons.
(900) (45 mins)
That's it. And how was that house in St. James Square lit?
R- It was lit with gas because as I said father was a gas fitter.
Fantail or mantle?
R- Vertical mantles.
Aye, incandescent mantles.
R- Not only that but it was on a sort of a telescope tube, you could bring it lower or push it higher according to what you wanted to do. If you were sewing or as I said. Many a house had paraffin lamps. To go back round all Jepp Hill and all up that way, Orchard Street was all paraffin lamps. And as I said, anybody, eventually bit by bit they got gas in down stairs then when they could afford it they had gas upstairs . And I can remember when I was married at first and I got a house, I got a by-pass thingummy, so you didn't have to strike a match and light the gas. I could turn the gas on from the doorway to light the gas. Understand what I mean?
Yes. A pilot.
R- Yes, a pilot light on.
(950)
Yes, that ud be a marvellous bloody thing then.
R - But the first gas lights I remember in the bedroom was very similar to a Bunsen burner, a Bunsen burner and an acetylene lamp, which gave you this fanlight flame.
Fantail jet aye.
R- Very poor illumination.
SCG/07 May 2003
6,258 words.
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 78/AL/02
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 17th OF SEPTEMBER 1978 AT HEY FARM, BARNOLDSWICK. THE INFORMANT IS ARTHUR ENTWISTLE, RETIRED ENGINEER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Now when did you first have electric light Arthur?
R - First have electric light? That would be 1935.
Ah, so that wouldn’t be at St. James Square?
R - No this was after I was married of course.
That's it, well we'll get round to that when we got round to your marriage. Now how did you dispose of the household rubbish in St. James Square?
R- Oh there was dustbins. Just let me get this right. We used to have what they call an ash pit not dustbins, and that was emptied periodically. It was, all the refuse was tipped into this, it was open front with a roof on this ash pit because the main heavy rubbish was the ashes from the fires. Cartons and paper of course was fired but empty tins, well when you think of it, tins of salmon were a luxury in those days so there wasn’t much rubbish like that. There’d be mainly ashes, coal ashes and things like that, that was rubbish.
So It ud be true to say that very little ud get thrown in the ash pit that would ever start smelling. Most of the stuff had been through the fire first.
R- More or less, yes.
Yes, and many a time, tell me if I'm wrong, many a time even the tins were put through the fire weren’t they.
R- Yes it's always been, and you may quote this, it's always been a habit of mine, even today. From the point of view of discouraging vermin and health hazards. I always have done, and I even remember me dad always burned empty tins when we were lucky enough to have salmon.
Yes, and apart from that, you know yourself, a tin either side of the fire hole makes the hole smaller doesn’t it, you can get by with a smaller fire.
R- Yes, that’s true.
I've seen that done in our house, you know, an A1 tall tin each side of the fire and it's amazing, it'll save half a shovel full of coal in a day. Aye. Now how did your mother do her washing?
R- Well, rubbing board, dolly tub, posser. The early posser was a thing with four legs on like a stool on a stilt which you twisted round and then later on there came conical shaped copper things with pipes threaded through which would then squirt the water different ways through the wash. In other words to get, force the dirt out of the clothes by the friction of the water. (These were used with an up and down motion) And of course the old wooden rollered wringing machine which invariably stood in the back yard in many cases with an old coat thrown over the top to protect it from the elements because they were a cumbersome thing.
How about, I nearly said washing powder! What did she use for washing? Did she use soap or..?
R- She used to use grated soap in the early days until the washing powders came on the market, say in the middle thirty's.
How long did it take her to do the washing?
R- A full day without question or doubt.
And how often did she do it?
R - Once a week.
And how did she dry it?
R - Well if it couldn't be dried outside it was dried inside on the maiden and then when it was sufficiently dry it was ironed and then put up on a rack which you wound up, long bars of wood..
That's it, in front of the fireplace on pulleys.
R- On pulleys yes, which was wound up and you’d hang your clothes there.
Would a rack like that be a luxury Arthur or would it be a fairly common thing in almost any house?
R- No I wouldn’t say it was a common thing in every house, if you had one that wound up on pulleys you see it was a luxury. Prior to that it was a piece of string hung across the fireplace and you put a few clothes on it with the risk of scorching or what have you. But the mantelpieces were fairly broad and fairly far out from the wall in many cases and that's how they got by.
What can you remember most clearly about washing day?
R- Well, most clearly, the personal discomfort in the home of wet clothes hanging about, irregular meals because when washing was in progress it was, well you take your bloody chance sort of thing.
Would Monday be the usual washing day?
R- Monday invariably was washing day.
(5 mins)
So dinner on Monday would be resurrections?
R- Well, come back to St James Square where there was a limited area there was a communal arrangement where Mrs So and So would wash on one day and Mrs So and So would wash on the other day so that the lines would be available for all the washing in the yard. It was a kind of a small, very small community arrangement which until the women fell out, which they invariably did, seemed to work successfully.
And how did your mother clean the house Arthur?
R- Clean the house. [laughs] Well I think today's modern woman would shudder. You had a stiff broom and I remember, as I remarked earlier on, you would have coconut matting and the floor was vigorously brushed with this stiff brush. Occasionally the mat would be rolled back and the muck underneath that would be brushed out through the doorway and out, into the back yard more often than not. Carpet sweeper, well until you got into a house with the luxury of a wooden floor and carpets, they were practically, virtually unknown and in the house that we were living in it wouldn’t have been a bit of use nor would a vacuum. Well a vacuum might have been but…
(100)
Now about furniture Arthur, can you remember anything about the furniture?
R- The furniture was always the hard bottomed hard backed kitchen chair. Sometimes bentwood chairs which have gone out of fashion. One always had a big square table with a white deal top, well scrubbed and of a Sunday of course you always had a cloth on it. During the week you would have had what we called an American cloth on it, it was a kind of, well..
Soft oil-cloth?
R- That’s right yes.
Yes, I know what you mean. Was there a sideboard?
R- We did have a sideboard yes.
Corner cupboard?
R – No, no corner cupboard.
Was there any piece of furniture that your mother particularly looked after? You know, that she was very particular about.
R - Well this again was at a different period of time. It seemed to me that we had the best furniture when me father was in the army. I remember we had a round table, a mahogany table with a velvet table cloth.
That's before you went into St James Square.
R - Yes that was while me father was in the army. But after that until we left St. James Square it was just what you might call good solid rough uncomfortable kitchen furniture.
Aye that’s a good description.
R - Well to give you an idea. I didn't have a seat. My sister and I, this was before the other two boys were born, was not allowed to sit at table, we stood up for our meals and when I wasn't playing out my seat was a coal bucket by the fireside with a sack on top of it.
Aye.
(150) )10 mins)
R- And when I started work I was allowed to sit down at the table.
We'll get on to that when we get on to meals Arthur. I'm very interested in that but we’ll get on to that when we get on to the meals. Did you or your brothers and sisters do any jobs in the house?
R- Oh yes, yes definitely. I must just point out here that there’s a discrepancy of twelve years between my other brothers and myself and my sister. One of my jobs, we had a steel fender round the fire, in front of the fire, and the usual fire irons, tongs and long poker and it was polished steel and my job was to brush the hearth, take the ashes out from underneath the fire, which was in a pit under the fire with a grate on top to let the finer ashes through. The other, the cinders, you used to shovel back on the fire. But anyway to come back to the fender, the method of cleaning it was a piece of rag, and you spit on it put it into the grit, the dust off the ashes, then scour the steel work of the fender and then polish it until you could see your face in it. Not only that, my mother and father were working and I were still at school so we had to wash up and lay the table ready for our parents coming home. Of course, chopping the fire wood, bringing the coal in and running the Sunday errands was all part of life we didn't question it.
Did your father do any work in the house, like mending things or decorating, cleaning, cooking or anything like that?
R - Well not regularly. I remember, we’re still, we're back in St. James Square when he came out of hospital, the military hospital before he was fit to work and mother was working he did cook the meals and I must say this, he was a very proficient cook at that which I believe he had learned whilst he was in the forces. But what he used to commonly call Mary Anning such as washing a floor, scrubbing a floor, no. He would make a meal and superintend me sister and meself doing other jobs in the house until he got fit enough to go to start work,
(200)
R - Oh he could cook, but after that, after he started work, we would never do anything in the house at all. It were what he called Mary-Anning.
When you lived in St. James Square did the family own that house?
R - No. Rented property.
Any idea what the rent was?
R- To be quite honest I haven’t. I think during the war years it was about 8/6d and then it went up I think to 10/-. (ten shillings)
When you say during the war years, do you mean the first world war?
R - Yes. The first world war.
How was the landlord?
R - That I don't know.
Did you ever hear your parents saying anything about him? Whether he was a good landlord or a bad one?
R- No I can't recollect they did. The only thing I might have heard them complain that he never did any decorating for you. You did all your own painting more often than not, white washing the rooms or distempering 'em according to your circumstances.
When you say decorating, do you mean inside or outside?
R - Inside and I remember outside, me dad did cement wash it every year.
Cement wash the stone work?
R - Cement wash the stone work.
Did your mother do any work in the house to earn a little bit extra money. You know like child minding or taking in washing or anything?
R- No I can’t remember her minding anybody else's child because she was always at work herself and I don't recollect, she wasn't a needlewoman.
Did she weave up till when she died Arthur?
R - Well I can't say up till she died. Lets say she wove until she left the town in 1940.
Yes of course, I'm sorry I was forgetting that. Were there any women in the neighbourhood doing anything in the home to make a bit of extra money, like taking in washing or mending, dressmaking.
(15 mins)
R - Yes very often some women neighbours, I can't specify who because it's a long time ago. Many of them would cook a meal in their own home and have it ready for a neighbour and was paid for doing it. So that they had a hot meal when they came in from work.
Good idea too.
R - And I had an aunty who was very, very skilful at crocheting and needlework and so was popular and so good that she could knock quite a bit of money up at it.
(250)
R- Course in those days interior decorations, the fireplace being the focal point in the house, eventually instead of just having the iron mantelpiece they started off with having a board put on top. Extending it and deepening it, and then having it curved. And very often either they would have a velvet pelmet as we would call it today or more often than not it was needlework, made in kind of like a green hard linen type of stuff, hard wearing. And she could knock up quite a bob or two on that. And she even crochet and knit baby’s shawls and that sort of thing and made herself quite a bit of money.
What did your mother cook on?
R- Well we had the old fashioned range, oven. More often than not in those days it was pans on the top bars as we called it. The kettle was on a swinging iron above the fireplace, swung away if it wasn't needed. I remember the main diet in those days was hashes, stews and that. In my days, what I used to consider to be a luxury was plum duff.
Aye, we'll get on to plum duff in a minute or two. When did your mother have her first gas stove?
R- Now then.
That's a difficult question actually I know.
R- First gas stove, I’m just trying to get, she had her first gas stove, oven when she left St James Square and went to live in Lower North Avenue.
So all the time you were in St. James Square it was..?
R- Open fire and an oven.
Open fire. Reight Arthur. Did she bake her own bread?
R- Yes.
And how often did she bake?
R- Sometimes twice a week.
And did she bake cake. When you say twice a week, she didn’t bake, well obviously I was just going to ask a silly question then. I was going to ask you if she baked enough for all week when she was baking twice a week. I'll forget that question Arthur. Did she bake cake?
R - Well what one would call today oven-bottom cakes, sad cakes, currant cakes.
(300)
How about fruit loaf, sweet loaf?
R- Very rarely, they were luxury.
You see that’s a striking thing, well I say striking, that’s a small thing that nowadays, when we talk about cake we mean what you and Amy, that’s your wife of course, that's for the tape because they don’t know that your wife's called Amy yet, would call sweet loaf and fruit loaf.
R - No when I say cakes I mean what were commonly called sad cakes. Unleavened some people would say.
That’s it, oven-bottom cakes, sad cakes.
R - Some with currants in and some plain. And the sad cake we used to eat warm from the oven, quarter it, slice it down the middle and put margarine or butter as the case may be. And we used to eat them warm.
Did she ever make it with mint in?
R - No not to my knowledge.
It's nice with mint in. Did she make pies?
R- Oh good lord yes. She was renowned for making pies.
What kind?
R - Meat pies and meat and potato pies.
And sometimes if things were bad, just tattie and onion?
R - Very often, sometimes a little bit of corned beef which was a cheap form of food in those days.
Did she make jam or marmalade?
R - Not very often, not very often.
If she did, did your mother have a jam pan?
R- I don't think she did as such. If she made jam of course cast iron pans would range from, I won't say quite enormous, but largish pans down to what we called milk pans.
(20 mins)
Yes.
R - So there was no such thing as a proper jam pan as we know today. Brass or copper.
Did she make home made wine or beer?
R - No never.
Pickles?
R - No not to my knowledge.
Did she ever make any of her own medicine?
R- Well, if you can call it medicine. Yes she would make a kind of medicine where she combined sulphur, thick black Spanish and some sort of evil concoction when you had a cold or whatever, it sort of cured all, kill or cure.
Well as far as your mother was concerned that was medicine, she was making her own medicine, yes that's it.
(350)
R- It was medicine yes.
And how about sulphur and black treacle. Brimstone and treacle?
R- Brimstone and black treacle. That was a common thing in the Spring. If you got a bit spotty or something like that.
You know my mother was the same, she had this idea that sulphur cured spots. It did something to your blood, purified the blood.
R- That’s right purify, that's it.
You could get sulphur tablets couldn't you. Do you remember them? You used to suck them. Ernie Roberts tells a good tale about that, about his mother dosing him with flowers of sulphur for tonsillitis and the way she did it, she put it in a tube and blew it down his throat, and be blew first so there you are.
R – (Arthur laughs] Coming back to home, what you might term home remedies. Of course in those days I didn't know a lot about those sort of things myself, but I can remember amongst the women, Senna pods was a universal must to make sure that they had their menstrual periods. There was a firm belief in Senna pods too if they thought they were pregnant. If they missed a week it was always Senna pods or a strong brew of Senna pod tea.
Have you ever come across Penny Royal?
R- Now then, this is only vaguely in my mind. I’ve heard the name but I can’t remember. I’m not going to honestly say that I knew of it at all. I've heard of it.
I've been told that penny royal, I've no knowledge of this, I haven’t gone in to it. But I’ve been told that penny royal was a herb which was supposed to be of value in inducing an abortion.
R- You've jogged my memory. That's where I may have heard of it listening to women talk. You know as you were a kid, well they think you're a kid, you have big ears and you hear a lot of things you're not supposed to do. As I say I'd heard of penny royal but didn't connect anything until you've just mentioned it now.
Yes, well that make it suspect. Now you were mentioning earlier on about the lady that got sent to Strangeways.
(401)
Would that be a fairly common thing in those days. I mean obviously a lot of women would be frightened of pregnancy wouldn't they. They were in such, there was such poverty. Was it fairly common, abortion?
R- It was, it was quite common. I'd go as far as to say it was common even in the late thirties. Not as common as it had been, because married women invariably, as far as my aunt goes that was sent to Strangeways, it was invariably unmarried women or in some cases during the war, where their husband had been away on service and it couldn’t possibly have been, you understand what I mean? And then they went for help for creating an abortion. She did it manually, I can't say just exactly how but as far as 1 can remember it was sort of if you could prick or puncture the womb it would bring about an abortion. But of course where so many young women died was by the lack of the proper high sterilised equipment, if you follow what I mean. And there were certainly a lot of young women did lose their lives by it. That's why the law was so strict and they jumped down heavily on women that were known to abort people. As I say she got many a woman out of trouble in this town and then of course when she went to prison nobody knew her. But she lived it down you see. A sort of nine days wonder.
(25 mins) (450)
What did you usually have for breakfast Arthur? Straight from abortions to breakfast Arthur.
R- Porridge on some occasions, toast on some occasions. Bread an jam invariably and this, I might emphasise on this, the only time one saw an egg was on a Sunday and until I got working my sister and I shared an egg. If it was boiled it was hard boiled, cut exactly in two and we had half an egg each. Or if it was fried in the frying pan it was turned over and we had half an egg each. It wasn't until I got working or started apprenticeship that I was allowed to have a full egg. Then of course my sister had to have a full one, because there wasn't anybody to cut in half with if you follow what I mean.
Aye it ud he a good thing for her wouldn't it. [both laugh]
R - Yes and then I was allowed to sit down at the table.
Yes now you were saying about this. Now you've mentioned one or two things that are starting, to knit together. Now we've got the big square wooden table with a scrubbed top, you've said that on occasions there was American cloth on it.
R- More often during the week.
Yes that’s it. Now at weekend, what was there on the table.
R- Well you’d have, I don't know whether I'd call it linen but it was, it had a design woven into it type of thing.
Tablecloth.
R- Tablecloth.
Yes. Now when you had a meal, during the week we're talking about now, did all the family have the meal at the same time?
R- Always unless [someone was working].
Did all the family sit down?
R- No, not until I got working.
Did any of the family get to sit at the table before they started working?
R- No.
Did everybody at the table have the same things to eat?
R- More or less yes. Apart from, as I say, when you come to the egg and you only had a half.
Yes.
R- But apart from that if it were, well mussels and cockles or
(500)
fish and chips or hash, stew or whatever it was, we all had the same sort of food.
On the whole would you say your fathers diet, and the food he ate, was it better or worse than yours or just about the same?
R- Just be about the same, only the quantities would be different.
Yes. And did the family have a garden or an allotment?
R- Oh no, not at that time.
But later on?
R - Well later on the old man had a hen pen down the Butts where he had a few fowl and goats.
And did he use the produce himself or did he sell any.
R- Used it domestically.
Yes that's it.
He reared young goats and when they were old enough he’d slaughter them and we’d eat them in the family. When I say the family, I mean uncles, aunties.
Did he slaughter the goats?
R- Oh yes. He used to bring ‘em home, bring them into the bathroom the young goat…
Into the…?
R- Into the house..
Yes, you said bathroom.
R- This is when we were in Lower North Avenue when we’d moved up just as I said. And of course he’d use the bathroom as a slaughterhouse, the animal in the bath until it bled and then it was skinned and cut up and uncles and various relatives had portions of it because you'd no means of keeping it you see. But I will say this, people today would look down their nose on it but I’ll say this, it was far superior to any of the best lamb you could possibly buy today.
This was Goat meat?
R- Goat flesh.
And what year would that be about Arthur?
R- Let's see, 1926 or 1927. Thereabouts.
1926 or 1927, aye just about when your dad finished for the railway.
R- Yes.
How much milk did the family get each day?
R- Narthen. I couldn’t say with certainty, because milk was relatively cheap. I could safely say it ‘ud be a minimum of a pint a day.
Yes.
R- A minimum.
How often was it delivered?
R- Morning and evening.
And how was it delivered?
R- Well horse and cart, kits and boys with little cans with the correct measure came into your house and poured it into a jug and then back to the cart, get it filled up and deliver it next door, the milk boys.
And did the family have butter, did your mother use butter?
R- Not very often. It was more often than not margarine.
How about dripping?
R- And dripping.
What fruit did you eat most often?
R- Well, I should say if we did have any fruit as a luxury it more often tin pears and things like that.
Aye, and how about fresh fruit?
R- Very little unless what you bought when you was going to school, that sort of thing.
Now there's a thing, you don't eat fruit do you?
R- I don't now but I did until I was fifteen.
Yes, what changed you Arthur?
R- Well I don't know, it's something psychological I think. Down Frank Street there was a big greengrocer’s shop and fruiterers and what have you. Not only was he retail he was wholesale and there must have been fruit gone bad and I know I was passing this place one day and I must have got a real lung full of this. What I would call a stench and today the very smell of fruit puts me off. I don’t know why, something psychological. I can’t really explain it.
Well we're not in the business of explaining, no, that's all right Arthur.
(600)
Now I’ll just mention a few foods here and just tell me if you had them, every week or once a month or very rarely or never. Bananas?
R- Bananas, sometimes we’d have them on Sunday as a dessert at tea-time after a meal of sandwiches and what have you, with skimmed milk on. Cream was virtually unknown. Bananas sliced up you know with milk, tinned milk and sugar.
[Arthur means evaporated skimmed milk when he says skimmed milk. It was a cheap alternative to cream]
If you had bananas with the skimmed milk and the sugar would it be usual to have bread and butter with it as well?
R- Yes I’ve know me sister and I've seen me dad make sandwiches out of 'em.
How about rabbit?
R- Well I wouldn't say every week, but if I said twice a month that we had rabbit pie I wouldn't be far wrong.
Where did the rabbit come from?
R- My uncle was a poacher.
Oh there was a lot went on! How about fried food, out of the frying pan Arthur?
R- Fried food, well apart from bacon, kippers, the occasional Haddocks something like that there was not much fried food.
Any other sort of fish?
R- I’ll tell you, well I’m telling a lie when I say there wasn't.
(35 mins)
One would have what we called bubble and squeak. In other words what we didn’t finish at Sunday dinner in the way of cabbage and potatoes and what have you was all chopped up and put in the frying pan and fat with it. And believe you me you can make a bloody good meal out of it with a slice of bread.
Aye, I've eaten it myself. Did your mother used to fry it until it went brown on the bottom or did she just...
R- Yes more or less when it was just starting to stick to the pan and that was it.
Just started to stick to the pan and that were it aye. Me mother were the same. Fish Arthur, apart from, you mentioned kippers and a bit of haddock fried you know. Did you ever have fish in any other way?
(650)
R - No.
We’re including shell fish of course.
R - Only the Finnan Haddock boiled, it was invariably boiled.
Yes with milk.
R- That's about all.
Yes, and you've mentioned cockles and mussels..
R – Well, Cockles and mussels.
Yes that's it.
R - In season of course.
Is there a season for cockles and mussels?
R – Yes.
Well do you know I didn’t know that Arthur.
R- Yes.
Well that's happen why I've been so poorly off 'em from time to time. Cheese?
R- Well there again I never ate cheese. Although there was cheese in the house.
Any particular reason why you didn't eat it or you just didn’t like it?
R- Well as I said it dates back to this psychological thing about smell. Now if I don't like the smell of anything I couldn't eat it to save me life. I couldn't sit down and eat a curry even though it might be delectable. But I just couldn’t and it's always been the same with vinegar or sauce even. The smell disagrees with me so I couldn't face it.
How about cow heel?
R - Oh yes cow heel.
Tripe, trotters, black pudding?
R - Tripe, trotters, black pudding, yes.
Great stuff.
R - Coming to black pudding. If I may just emphasise one little point here I don’t know why it was, but it was sort of a family custom in my father’s family and how long it went back I don't know, but Christmas Day breakfast was always nothing else but black pudding and bread.
Yes. Was it fried or boiled?
R - Fried.
Yes I like it fried. Eggs, well you've told us about eggs haven't you. They were a luxury. Tomatoes?
(700)
R - Never eat them.
Grapefruit?
R - Oh grapefruit wasn’t, at that time you're speaking of I don't think it had been cultivated.
Sheep’s head?
R - Very often.
Very often.
R- It was my mothers favourite. Sheep’s head with, I’m trying to think of it.
Lentils?
R - Not lentils, it’s another, is it barley?
Pearl barley?
R - Pearl barley.
Yes.
R – She’d sit and pick at a sheep’s head for hours.
Did your family ever had tinned food?
R- Occasionally, as I say high days and holidays you'd have tinned salmon, something like that.
Corned beef?
R- Corned beef. Oh corned beef very often was taken to work for sandwiches, in between your sandwiches. For dinner time, lunch time.
Yes. Can you ever remember tinned food being bad?
R- Being bad?
Yes.
R- No I can't say. I can't say honestly that I do.
Aye. Did the family drink tea?
R- Tea yes.
Cocoa.
R- Cocoa often yes.
Coffee?
R- Coffee, never.
Never. When you say never, why, price?
R- Well it might have been price or it might have been parents preference I don't know.
What did you have for Christmas dinner?
(750) (40 mins)
R- Now then, we’d either have a big hen, I never knew the luxury of a, I think once we did have a goose but never turkey. Sometimes a duck, but when there was a family of six of us, when me other two brothers were born, of course we used to get a good big fat hen or a couple of cock chickens you know. Enough to feed the family for that one meal. Same as the way today, as you know yourself, they get a turkey at Christmas and the damn things kicking about in the New Year if you're not careful if there's a small family.
That’s it aye. Christmas pudding?
R- Always.
Always. What were your favourite foods when you were a child?
R- Favourite foods?
Yes.
R- Well my favourite food was meat and potato pie or pie and peas.
[Stanley laughs] It figures Arthur! What did you have to eat when the family was particularly hard up?
R- Ah, now then. Well it was more often bread and scrat as my mother called it. Bread and scrat which were dripping. Or bread and margarine and invariably jam like.
I must just say it while I think Arthur. As you know in many ways we've had similar setting offs in life. If you had bread and dripping did you ever get the luxury of pepper on it?
R - Salt.
Never pepper?
R- Not often, because I’ve never been a lover of pepper individually.
Aye that's it yes. You see I forget. But was it there if you wanted it, was it there?
R - Oh it was there if you wanted it yes.
Would you say that pepper was a fairly cheap spice, would nearly everybody have it?
R- I don't think it was a cheap spice in those days, a more common thing that was used, we had often on a Sunday, which you haven't mentioned or asked me, if I might butt this in. Invariably we’d have a milk pudding, rice pudding on a Sunday and I always remember me mother having a nutmeg and a grater and sprinkling lavishly nutmeg on the top of the pudding.
It makes you wonder if she’d have done it if she'd have known. I mean they say now a days that nutmeg is an aphrodisiac. It makes you wonder if your mother ud have been sprinkling nutmeg on.
R - [Arthur laughs] I don't know..
It is one theory..
R - Is it really,
It's reckoned to be a fairly potent drug nutmeg you know.
R- Oh, I didn't know that.
Yes. I can believe it an all, it tastes very strong doesn’t it. And it certainly does warm your stomach up. Did your father come home for all his meals?
R- Put it this way, if he wasn’t on a boozing session yes.
Oh good, that'll come in later. If not, if he didn't, well you’ve just said that he did, but can you remember him, you know, actually saying that he wasn't coming home and taking something to work with him?
(850)
R- Well can I re-cap back to when he started work on the railway. Very often he used to have to take a basin. When he worked on the railways it wasn't always possible to come home because he worked what would be called shift system today, there was an early turn and a late turn. First of all he was in the goods yard and very often I used to have to take his dinner down, it was done in a basin with a plate on top, rag round it. And you'd to go like hell down to the station yard to make sure he got his dinner hot enough so you didn't get your ear hole boxed. But apart from that, that’s just a case when he couldn’t get home for meals due to his occupation, otherwise he came home to all his meals, more or less.
Aye. How often would you say you took his grub down for him?
R- Oh, two to three times a week at least.
Do you think your mother ever went short of food to feed the rest of you?
R- Yes.
You're sure about that?
R- I'm sure about that.
What makes you so sure?
R - Well, it’s only in the light of later years that you think about these things and I remember sitting down, my sister and I sitting down to a meal and mother not sitting down to with us. Of course in those days, one assumed that she'd had her meal, which I suppose she probably intended us to think. But in later years I realised that she didn’t have a meal to feed us.
Yes. Who usually did the shopping?
(45 mins) (900)
R - Oh mother always did the shopping.
Yes.
R- Unless she sent us kids on an errand.
Yes. How often was it done?
R- Well in those days you'd to give your order into the shop which isn’t done to-day and it would be delivered to the house. You know more often than not I think we had food delivered to the house.
Yes, where were the vegetables bought Arthur?
R- At Savages.
Aye it figures, and where was the meat bought?
R- More often than not the frozen meat shop.
Dewhursts?
R - The Argentine.
Yes the Argentine, Dewhursts aye. And of course in those days it was the poorest people that went to the what they called 'Frozen' shop wasn’t it?
(950)
R- Aye definitely yes.
Yes. Where were the groceries bought?
R- Well, where the swap shop is now there was a very big grocer. (Corner of Frank Street and Rainhall Road. In 2013 it is the Co-op chemists) I think his name was Singleton. I always remember that shop because he had a poster in the window of fried eggs with lashings of pepper on the top, you know, succulent looking. And the shop it sold everything type of thing, from butter out of a tub or margarine out of the box and the..
Just one little thing there now, that's something that's not been mentioned, butter out of a tub.
R - Out of a tub yes.
That’s it and it's, well the barrel's been lined with paper and then filled with butter hasn't it they used to break the barrel away from it.
R - Yes. They'd take the lid off, start there and then they'd break a couple of staves off. Serve down to that level and then they'd take the other staves off until you get down to the bottom of the butter. By that time then, if it wasn’t a shop that had a big turnover, it was getting a little bit worse for wear as one might term it.
(1000)
SCG/07 May 2003
6,500 words.
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 78/AL/03
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 18th OF SEPTEMBER 1978 AT HEY FARM, BARNOLDSWICK. THE INFORMANT IS ARTHUR ENTWISTLE, RETIRED ENGINEER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Right we're back on the ball again Arthur. We were talking about groceries and what not last night and if you remember you were saying that you got your groceries at Singletons.
[Barrett’s Directory for 1902 shows Thomas Singleton as grocer of Brook Street.]
R- Yes. Family grocers.
Did your mother ever shop at the Co-op?
R- No not as a regular member of the Co-op, no.
She wasn't a member of the Co-op?
R- She could possibly have popped in and bought some item that, like you do today in a supermarket, that was on offer or something like that, but I don't remember her being a co-op member as such.
Would you say there was any difference between the prices in the little shops on the street corner and the shops in the middle of Barlick?
R – No I wouldn't say there was any marked difference because food in those days was plentiful, what was lacking was money. There wasn't much undercutting as we know today or offers of cheaper goods, five pence off, you understand what I mean. I should say the price of the commodities in the shops, food wise, apart from the difference of the frozen meat and fresh meat, was pretty static.
Yes. Did the shops that your mother used use to give credit?
R- Yes.
Do you think she ever used that?
R- She definitely did, you got your groceries one week and you paid for them the next.
Yes, and how was that worked, what were the actual mechanics of that at the shop?
R - Well the actual mechanics were, if the shop keeper knew you, knew your family, knew you were substantial enough or could be relied on, you had a weeks credit.
Did your mother have a regular book at one shop?
R- Yes she had a regular book at this Singletons.
Yes that's it, because that's why they used to call it, the shop book, wasn’t it.
R- Yes.
How about pawn shops Arthur?
R- Ah well, there you are. There were a time when the term used to be pop in on Friday and pop back in on Monday, in other words you popped your wedding ring or sometimes your husband’s best suit, brought it out for week-end and it went back in on Monday if you follow what I mean.
(50)
That's it aye. Which were the pawn shop in Barlick?
R- Well, there’s a firm left in Skipton now, Ledgard & Wynn used to be in the middle of Church street where the Magic Eye is now, that was the pawn shop. Not only was it a pawn shop as such, it sold goods. Suits, linoleum, you name it, it was a typical Jewish concern.
Aye. you say Ledgard & Wynn?
[Though confused about Barlick, Arthur was actually right about Ledgard and Wynn’s. Horace Thornton {79/AD/02, page 15.} said that they were originally pawnbrokers in Skipton. I have no evidence as yet of them operating in Barlick.]
R - No I beg your pardon. There was two brothers in the town, there was Isaac and Louis Levi. One brother had a shop on one side of the street and next to the Commercial Inn, is it on the other side of the street, was the other brother. But they both sold furniture and one was a pawn shop, plus selling cheap, very inferior suits, you know what I mean. In other words you pawned your watch and you get a suit and you got fleeced both ends of the stick. You get what I mean, they were shoddy goods.
(5 mins)
R- I think they had a term for it in America, the company store which, well it's hardly relevant to this conversation but it was prevalent in this county a hundred and forty years ago. You worked for a firm and the firm paid you in their money and there's still some of that money knocking about in Dudley and round there.
Aye that's it, bucket shops.
R- That's right.
Aye, Can you remember if pawn shops did good business then?
R- Definitely, they definitely did good business.
Yes. Did your mother use them?
R- Infrequently if times were bad enough or there was a domestic crisis, sickness, if your husband hadn't a wage. I mean to say there wasn't the social security, you popped your wedding ring or anything in other words to raise a bit of money until times brightened up a bit.
Yes. Was there anything that you ate then when you were young that you can't get now? Can you think of anything that you used to eat then that you can't get now?
R - Well the commonest commodity that we ate in those days was probably what I call, even with the bakers, home baked bread which of course the combines have ruined today. Food in general, lots of it, you could get more than you can get today. Particularly in rice and cereals and things like that because today the eastern countries, it’s their main diet and there isn't as much of that sort of stuff coming into the country. There were split peas, fine peas and black peas, well you can't buy black peas today, not to my knowledge anyway.
Yes. Would you say food was short during the first world war?
R - Definitely it was short during the first world war. Not only was it short, the first few weeks, or the first few months of the war, before the Government got organised, in our family my father volunteered I think it was the second day of the war, and free flour, sugar. tea and the barest necessities of life, life which you can make your own bread and so on, were distributed in I think it's the Commercial Yard. You know when you get to the bottom of Manchester Road there's a boutique shop, then there's a pub yard.
The Seven Stars.
R- Seven Stars. Well in the Seven Stars yard. Soldier's wives who hadn't got their pay book could go there if they had definite proof their husband was in the army. I can remember the chap who was in charge was up that flight of steps, standing above the crowd, then you had a ticket given which entitled you to a certain amount of flour, sugar, according to the number in the family which in that day there was three of us, me and my sister and mother. And that was of course in [force] until the regular pay cheques became fluent through the war ministry getting organised shall we say. Food was scarce, you were at the mercy of every tradesman. Saturday morning the Maypole, margarine shop at the bottom of Frank Street, used to open from eleven o'clock till twelve and you stood in a queue probably from nine o'clock till the shop doors opened and according to the speed and efficiency of the assistants in the shop, which they treated you like dirt, you understand what I mean, because you were subject to their whim. ‘Well I’ll serve you if I want to serve you.’ you know. If you haven't got the right money, go and get the right money. You had to have the right money in your hand for what you was buying. And that also was when the coupons, the food coupons were issued. You had to take your food coupons to cover the amount of margarine you could buy. But as I said, the shops only opened, some shops only opened for a limited time.
(150) 10 mins)
Was it common to see queues at the shops?
R - Oh good lord yes. It was as common to see queues in the 14/18 war as it was to see it in this last war.
Did you think that on the whole the family was better fed during the first world war than before?
R- Er no, I wouldn’t think so if I can remember rightly even though when things got on a level keel, when I say a level keel, mother was drawing the army pay regular, she was also working. Food was scarce, but what we did get was good, what we did have was good honest food but it was no more plentiful than it was before the war.
That's it aye. Now then clothing. You've always been a natty dresser Arthur, did your mother make any of the family’s clothes?
R - When we were children yes. Of course at that time ours was a relatively small family but very often you'd have a pair of pants made out of some of your dad's old uns. And in families where there was at least six children, it was a case of hand me down from one to the other until they was absolutely thoroughly worn out.
Did she have a sewing machine?
R- Sewing machine, I can't remember my mother ever having a sewing machine, it was all hand stitched.
Did she mend the clothes?
R - Oh yes definitely.
And did you ever have any passed on clothes?
R - Patched?
Passed on, hand me downs?
R- Very occasionally.
Yes of course, with you being the eldest they'd have to be from somebody else's family.
R - It ud be out of some other member of the family like an uncle, older cousin for instance.
Yes. If your clothes were, you know, if your mother ever bought you any clothes, where did she buy them from Arthur?
R- Well in that day it was prevalent to run a system was in existence called clothing clubs. You’d have a fella called on a Friday night which was, I think I mentioned earlier, Friday night was pay night for all the little debt-collectors to come and collect the money whatever it may be, and the clothing club was one of them. And you paid your weekly payments of money and when you'd saved so much you got your clothing club check which there were certain shops accepted them. Sometimes we had to go to Earby, sometimes we had to go to Colne depending on the type of commodity one wanted. And there was always a suspicion in the minds of the working people of that day, that because it was a clothing club check, and yet it was ready money, they foisted on to you if they could inferior goods at the top price. So when you went to buy with a clothing club check it was the custom to pick whatever you wanted, try it on and say we'll have that and then smartly whip the check across. And this brought a very queer expression on the shop-keeper’s face, it was a case of being outsmarted. But later on after the war, I'm running over a little bit, they became what they called the Scotchmen. In other words tailors came from Nelson and Burnley, Colne.
(200)
Narthen that's interesting, I've heard that before now. I was told that before, that the Scotchmen was just a slang term for the bloke that was collecting for the Provident or whoever it were.
R - It was a different firm entirely to the Provident. It would be quite a legitimate business but there would be a big shop say in Burnley and the Scotchmen so called, I don’t know how the term arose or why, he’d come and measure you at home for your suit and next week he’d bring the suit or coat or whatever it were that you’d ordered. And of course he came and collected his weekly payment.
Yes, and that wasn't like a Provident check, that was the actual firm that was selling the stuff.
R- No. That was actually cash.
Aye, like cash to the tailor style of thing.
(15 mins)
R - It could bring, well I, up to getting married, I had suits, overcoats, shoes from the Scotchmen.
Were they decent, were they alreight?
R- Yes quite, if you didn’t like the quality of the thing, if you didn't like it, we'll say an overcoat for instance, you didn't like the cut of it, you'd just say well I don't like that bring me another next week.
Oh, that's not so bad. And what happened to your old clothes Arthur?
R- Well narthen. This is a very difficult question to answer because I was very small in stature even at fourteen and it was the custom for schoolboys in those days to wear short trousers and they didn't go into long pants until you was about fifteen, sixteen. In other words when you reached the pubic age and with being small, [laughs] it was only when I played for my first dance that I had long trousers. And that was a case of father going out to the pawn shop to get a cheap suit for me to go and play in.
And what happened to your old clothes?
R- Well, in some cases they were passed on to cousins, there was a gap, a gap so big between my brother’s ages and ours that my clothes were virtually no good to them at all.
(250)
Aye that's it.
R – So, well, shirts, vests, underpants were an unknown bloody thing. [laughs] Pardon my swearing, the luxury of a pair of underpants was an unknown thing in those days. If you had a shirt and a vest, flannel shirt at that, you know for working in, going to work, and a pair of trousers and a waistcoat you was alreight.
Aye, What did you wear for school Arthur?
R- Wear for school. Well they invariably wore the jersey, shirt, we didn't have any school ties in those days, short trousers, long black stockings, we more often than not had holes in the heels, we used to put boot polish on the white part so it couldn't be detected. And, well it's a cap that’s almost gone out of existence, but at one date we used to call it a cricket cap. It's a cap that fit fairly snug on your head, well cricketers wore them, and a little neb at the front and a little button on the top.
Yes. Aye, that's it.
R- Some schools still use ‘em today as a matter of fact. I went to work with one on..
Aye school cap. Yes. Oh I've worn them, lost many a one off the top of the tram. What kind of footwear did you wear when you went to school.
R- Clogs.
Clogs. Irons?
R - Irons yes.
Where did you get your clogs generally?
R - Well, in the middle of Jepp Hill was a cloggers shop and that happened to be the nearest to where we lived. [Bob Hartley]
What was his name?
R- I can’t remember his name but there was another clogger in the town down by where the bridge goes over the Butts Beck by the Salvation Army. [Dam Head]
Yes.
R- There was a wood hut there, a clogger’s shop, clogger Marsh.
Yes. That fella near Jepp Till was his name Holmes? [I was wrong here, Holmes owned the pie and pea shop on Lamb Hill at that time.] It could have been, I couldn't swear.
Aye. It wasn't the Co-op clog shop was it?
R- Oh no, it was a private business.
Aye that's it, ‘cause the Co-op clog shop, where were the Co-op clog shop, they had one?
R- Co-op clog shop, I’ve got an idea, I may be wrong don't take
this as (Pause)
What did your mother wear in the house, you know, for housework?
(300) (20 mins)
R - Well the everyday dress was a blouse, long skirt, cotton stockings, underwear I don't know naturally and an apron.
When you say long skirt do you mean long skirt down to floor?
R- Practically to the floor. And invariably had an apron which was a brat they called them.
That's it, a brat yes.
R - Tied round her waist.
Yes. Was it a proper apron or was it a fent?
R- Well some people would, some people who worked in the factory did, you called 'em fents, but they didn't call 'em fents at home because that admitted they'd pinched it.
Aye.
R - They'd use their brat they'd put their brat on.
Yes that’s it aye but it wasn't like a made up pinafore.
R- Oh it wasn't a bought or manufactured article.
That's it aye. If she went out would she keep it on?
R- If she was going to the corner shop, the custom was, she used to pick one corner up of the brat and tuck it into the waistband so as she’d got half an apron on in a diagonal. Which was a peculiar attitude of mind I used to think, why tuck it into the top of the apron to say, see, like I've got a nice skirt on, you understand what I mean.
Aye. but I like that. That's first time anybody's mentioned that. I can understand that. It just showed they weren’t working at the time didn't it, you know it showed they were having ten minutes off.
R- Yes, that’s it.
Aye, that's it. You never know it might have been a sign that they were ready for a bit of a gossip. So if she went down to corner shop she'd just tuck one corner of her pinny in and..
R- Into her waistband and away she'd go.
She wouldn't bother to put her hat on, or would she just chuck her shawl on her head?
R - Invariably have a short shawl and put that round her head if the weather was bad enough, if the weather was alright she'd just go as she was.
Yes that's it.
R - Oh 1 might just mention one thing while we're on about aprons. Sometimes, if she went to the corner shop and bought more commodities than she'd gone for, it was a common thing to carry them in the apron back home because she hadn’t gone out with a basket you see. Just the odd times.
Yes. They still do, they still do that in the mill.
R - Do they?
Yes. In fact I’ll tell you who does that regular. The little lad in mill that looks after the lavatories, [Colin Macro] when he comes down for the toilet rolls, because I'm IC [army term for ‘in charge’] toilet rolls as they are a valuable commodity. I always give him eight at once and he always wears a brat and all he does is just hold two corners out and I throw eight toilet rolls in and off he goes.
(350)
R - That's it yes.
Exactly same thing. Did your father mend the families shoes, clogs, clogs or shoes?
R- Not very often, occasionally. Not everybody was proficient enough to do it. I remember me dad having a last, he’d put a clog iron on, you could go and buy clog irons and nails and you could buy patches of leather as a matter of fact. I never wore shoes even on Sunday until I was about fifteen. Because the custom was, up to the 1920's was, even with the men, you'd have a pair of brown leather clogs with brass nails for Sunday and your ordinary black leather clogs and plain tin tack nails, ordinary clogs for weekdays. So when you went out at Sunday with a pair of brown clogs on with brass nails you were literally dressed up. Shoes didn't become common, well, I should say getting on to 1927. The first time I ever wore shoes as I said, I must have been about fifteen or sixteen.
How many outfits did you have at any one time?
R- How many outfits?
Yes.
R- Clothing you mean?
Yes.
R- Well, I’d have one best suit so called and the working clothes. If you had two pair of trousers for work you were lucky. Well one pair were washed. You know what 1 mean because as I said, underpants were relatively unknown amongst the male [population] Well as far as I know and as far as I'm concerned. I don't know and I can't remember 'em being sold in the shops as such for men. And women wore, because I can remember going and getting 'em for an auntie of mine, they didn't wear bloomers as we know them today, they wore drawers. They were like two split legs and all they did when they went to the toilet, they sat down and pulled it apart and they were in business. [laughs]
(400) (25 mins)
Interesting, and they think they've invented something with open crotch knickers! Oh well, there you are Arthur it just goes to show there's nothing new under the sun. Right, [laughs] it says here were any of your clothes made for you by a dressmaker. That is evidently not intended for you Arthur.
R- Not until I got in a position where I was earning enough money. Where I could go and have a suit made to measure.
I said a dressmaker!
R- Oh a dressmaker! No it doesn’t apply to me, no.
Would you say there was a difference between the way your father dressed and say his foreman. Well he didn't actually have a foreman here but say somebody at the mill that was in charge of him, you know, when he was working at the mill? Would, you say there was a definite difference in the way those people dressed. Would it be possible to tell a man’s station in life by the way he was dressed?
R- Well I can only quote actually to my knowledge, and it only occurred in the engineering, which there was very little in Barnoldswick. There was Brown and Pickles, I can always remember the foreman going to work who worked there and he wore a green bowler. When I say green, it was green with age, and that bowler hat was his badge of office.
Who was that?
R- I forget his name, he was an oldish fella, I can see him now walking down Wellhouse Road, he walked a bit like a penguin but he was foreman down at Brown and Pickles, millwrights and engineers. I can still remember this bloody mouldy green hat! And he never took it off from going into the works to coming out. [I think this will be Henry Brown who went in with Johnny Pickles in the early 1930s.]
Aye.
Would you say that clothes changed after the first world war?
R- Well they changed slightly, nothing really dramatic until you got into the late twenties. And then, into the late twenties we started to be influenced by, as we are today, the American film industry and fads that were sort of imported from America. For instance, Oxford bags which I wore in my youth was an importation but as I say that was the late twenties, twenty eight. If you'd enough money of course to indulge in such a luxury. In other words, I won't say we were the, what they call 'em, the Bovver Boys type 'cause we was always elegantly dressed even though the fashion might be a bit bizarre. And it was quite common for a young man, his Sunday best would be a blue serge suit, a shirt, stiff collar, a wing collar and very often a bow tie or a black tie, like a cravat. And one always wore a bowler hat and had a swaggering stick which was a walking stick with a silver head, something similar to the one I have downstairs now, and that was the well dressed youth of the thirties, early thirties. So fashions did change but apart from the Oxford bags there's nothing sticks firmly in my mind. You was dressed decently and tidy and that was the lot.
Bit of a change from clothes now Arthur, a bit more about the family. Were your parents at all strict about your behaviour at the table?
R - Oh definitely, most definitely.
In what way?
R- You wasn't allowed to go to the table until the meal was ready and you was told to go and take your place, and you each had your allotted place at the table, and as 1 said earlier on, your place was stood at one side of the table and the others at the other side, not at the corner.
There's just one little interruption there Arthur, I'm sorry. When you say you were stood at the table, would you say you were stood at the table because there was no where to sit or was there another reason?
(500) (30 mins)
R- You wasn't allowed to sit at the table.
So in other words, even it there’d been a chair there, your dad wouldn’t have let you sit at the table?
R- No, under no circumstances was you allowed to sit down.
Yes, and have you any idea what the reason for that was?
R- Well, the origin of that was semi-military, slightly Teutonic, and a code of the area to let you know that your place in the house was such and such a place and you couldn't get away from that. The eldest of the family, even though my father was far from being a religious man, the eldest of the family before bread was broken had to say grace which unfortunately became my lot. Even though my father wasn’t a religious man but he must have had an upbringing parallel with it because all our family were military people and as you know when I say Teutonic, on the continent at that period of time they had large families and the families marched in into their allotted place round the table and stood there till the father said grace and then they set to and had the meal, they wasn't allowed to speak at the table.
You weren’t?
R - None of the children was allowed to speak at the table because, I quote this as a little bit of ironic humour on my fathers part. We’ll say that we’d had a dinner and we’d been lucky enough to have a sweet cake each to finish off with or an extra pudding or something like that. The old man used to say “Them as asks for some can't have any and them that doesn’t ask doesn’t want any.” Which in the juvenile mind was a bloody puzzling paradox if you get what I mean. An ironic sense of humour.
Yes. And were your parents strict about anything else, like times for coming in or being cheeky or swearing?
R- Oh yes definitely. You wasn't allowed to use any language, well one never thought about it as a matter of fact.
Did your father swear?
R- Oh violently, he was a foul mouthed person.
In the house?
R- Well bloodying and blasting, damnation and all that. I don't swear, the usual jargon, four letter words. Oh no they didn't go to those extremes but he swore quite frequently and as I say literally give you a bloody good blasting.
Yes and you hadn't to swear.
R- No you wasn't allowed.
If you did do something wrong how did you get punished?
R- Well usually a back hander across the ears, and if you'd done something really naughty he didn't finish with one good smack you had a bloody good belting, you know what I mean. I had a very rough bringing up. Father was a very exceptionally violent man and he’s pummelled me like a punch ball and I know on one occasion he sent me on an errand and like lads do sometimes, you'd been on one or two errands, so I sort of pulled a face as I were turning away. He called me back and he gave me a good thumping and in his temper he started to strangle me, well I went unconscious. That was in the middle of summer and I had to go to work with a muffler round my neck in the middle of summer to hide the thumb marks. But my father, exceptionally, well I should say he was slightly unbalanced in that respect, he carried discipline too far.
Yes. Yes it sounds so Arthur. If you had a birthday was it different from any other day?
R- No.
Did you ever have prayers at home, you know, apart from grace?
R- No.
(600) (35 mins)
No. How did your family spend Christmas day?
R- Well there was always something rustled up for Christmas Day dinner. I did repeat earlier, the one fad father had, black pudding, and everybody had black pudding only for breakfast. Christmas dinner as 1 said could be a couple of fowl or a good big duck or a big fat hen. Geese, I don’t ever remember having goose and 1 don't remember having turkey until I was married.
How about any drink about at Christmas, in the house I mean?
R – No, not in the house.
Not in the house, no. Can you remember anything special at Easter you know, was there any celebrations at Easter?
R- Well Easter, there was more went on I should think that caught the imagination at Easter because Easter we’ve always associated with eggs for some particular reason. And very often eggs were dyed and some skilful people could even put photographs on the eggs of the locks. [Greenberfield locks] Which was you know, quite an achievement. And then of course there was what they called Pace Egg Sunday. Now whether I'm confusing Pace Egg Sunday and Easter Sunday..
No. I’ll tell you sommat now. This question on this sheet, and this is Elizabeth’s sheet, Elizabeth Roberts. How did the family spend the Easter holidays, did you have pace eggs?
(650)
R - Yes. You went out into the country, in our case you could have gone up Brown Hill or you could have gone on the Weets or some people further afield would go up Pendle Hill. And at a given time you all took your eggs, they were hard boiled eggs. Incidentally, some were dyed pink and if you rubbed a candle over the egg and made a mark through the candle wax with a sharp pointed article and boiled it and used a dye, your name came out clear on your own individual egg. And pace egging was of course rolling the egg down the hill and the one who's egg survived at the bottom of the hill, there was some small prize. And the usual church, Sunday School tea-urn and a few buns, you know, hot-cross buns and that sort of thing. These were organised of course by the Sunday School. But with being a Spring Festival as one might term it, a fertility festival, there was more going on at Easter than you did have at Christmas. After your Christmas dinner that was it, there was nothing further.
Narthen this is going to get you going Arthur! Did you have any musical instruments In the house?
R- Well, yes we did have. The first musical instrument, if I can call it a musical instrument, was a polyphone.
Yes go on, you tell me what a polyphone is.
R - Well it was a very elaborate form of a musical box, much larger than normal and you could put steel records on it. Some of the records were eighteen inches in diameter and of course it had pins in certain places in the record and as it moved along it struck pins which
(700)
struck the reed and you had music. When I say we had one, we only had one by virtue of the fact that my father at the particular time I'm speaking of, again it was just post-war, did a lot of trucking and trading as it were called. You know what I mean. Buying up, anybody that had anything to sell that were hard up. Same as a mangle, it's amazing what would be sold and with having a well equipped workshop he used to put new wood rollers in, paint 'em up and Saturday morning was a sales day. But anyway that was the only manual musical instrument.
(40 mins)
There's just one little thing about that, you've just mentioned something there. I know we're on musical instruments but I’m just going to take you back a little bit because it dawned on me today when I was doing the sheet for last nights tape that really I missed a bit of a goody. I take it that there wouldn't be many people in Barlick, even at that time, with a gas engine in the parlour.
R - With what?
A gas engine in the parlour.
R- Ah, well. When I say, well it wasn't a parlour as such, the room was intended to be a parlour.
Well that’s what I mean, what would normally have been a parlour and mean, in the Entwistle household..
R - It was a workshop.
It had a gas engine in it.
R - To drive a lathe and..
Yes, I think you'd better tell me a bit more about that Arthur. I’m beginning to warm to your father in some ways. I mean a gas engine in the parlour and slaughtering goats in the bath, he sounds like my sort of a bloke. [laughs]
R – Alreight, well I'll take it back just post-war..
(750)
R- When he was working on the railway, with being in the goods yard he got to know certain tradesmen and he got in pretty well with the Maypole dairy manager. And the margarine came in wooden boxes and that was the foundation of my father starting a wooden toy manufacturing business in his spare time and he did remarkably well with it. So well in fact, that Doctor Glen, he's long deceased, wanted to put money into it. He could see the possibilities because in those days there was no pressed toys coming from Germany or Japan. Practically all children’s toys were made of wood, even down to Dutch dolls in many cases, and painted. Well, my job was in this triangular room which became a workshop for the enterprise with a bench, a gas engine and a lathe, wood turning of course.
How big was the gas engine Arthur? I'm sorry.
R - Oh I should say, well relative horse power I should say one horse power. It wasn't very large but it was big enough to do the job.
Aye it ud be about the size of one of them, like that little Lister one and half horse I have in there.
R - That's right, thereabouts that size.
About that size, aye. Water cooled?
R - Oh yes water cooled and we used to bury the silencer box underground. Because he reckoned it made it more efficient. All you could hear were a ..put..put,,put.
Aye.
R - You didn't hear the explosion. You could only hear the exhaust of the gas.
Would you say that the neighbours were inconvenienced by the gas engine running?
(800)
R - Well as I mentioned previously they were back to back houses. And when father put this gas engine in he went round to his immediate opposite neighbour that would be affected by the sound to see if they had any objection and to listen for themselves as to what the extent of the noise was. And through the wall it sounded no more than what a sewing machine would. There wouldn't have been no more noise than a sewing machine would make in your own house if you follow what I mean.
Yes right Arthur, now back to the toys.
R- Well my job was to knock the margarine boxes to pieces. Carefully. Draw all the nails out of them and stack them in their proportionate sizes until of course they were required. And where the Maypole was stamped on the box father used to plane that off and we’d new wood to start with. Of course round about, just before Christmas was a very busy time. He got orders in from shops in the town, model aeroplanes, trains, wagons. It developed on to scooters, which you don't see today and scooters in those days were made purely of wood with a metal bracket, hinged bracket. My father went one better he had castings made and he put castings on his for the swivel. Not only that, he made them the Rolls Royce of scooters because he had them where you could put rubber tyres on, like on the pram wheels. I don't know how it was done even today but the foundry was the Boundary Foundry at Colne and there was a special pattern made that the wheels were cast from with a ‘V’ in it so that they required no more machining than drilling a hole through the centre of the boss and the rubber tyres putting on. Well you used to buy a tyre in lengths and it like had a spiral wire down the middle. Are you with me?
(45 mins) (850)
That's it yes, pram tyres are the same now.
R - You cut it, well like the pram tyre, you cut it into the length and then you twisted it back so that when you let go it screwed itself one into the other. Locked it and kept the tyre on the wheel. Well he did exceptionally well and were doing reasonably well financially but he was a fella that wasn't a business man and he had a lot of friends when he had a lot of money. And of course he was pretty free handed when he was in the pub and of course when the inevitable reckoning of the bills came in, sometimes he couldn't pay. More often than not. So eventually he declined. At one time he had five people working for him on that irrespective of me.
(900)
Yes. Now when you say he had five people working for him, obviously that wasn't in the parlour at St. James Square?
R - No. I'll tell you where that was, he graduated from there when he was doing the toy making. The building’s gone now, but the top of Wapping there used to be a Spiritualist Hall and a little narrow road, and the other side of the road was a red brick building which as 1 said, he’d got to the stage where he had a couple of lathes, a couple of circular saws and benches and what have you, drilling machine. You know to get on and more room to store the materials and toys. You've got to have room if you're making a number of toys. He had a chap painting ‘em and they had to be stored somewhere until they were delivered. And then from there, when the toy business became exhausted, he set up again. And at the bottom of Wapping on what we call Town Bridge when you're going to work in the morning if you go that way there's a little yard and what was a window in front of it and there’s a red wooden boarded up. [Where the bicycle shop is in 2003]
Yes.
R - And also in the same yard, which is lower down than the road quite a bit, he had all those premises there under those houses. That was a workshop and that was when he had the five people working for him. And round the back where the butchers shop is on the other side of the road was a barn. (Converted to a cottage in 2013) And we had part of the barn in there with a couple of very large lathes in. Well he went in partnership with a fella and he used to buy same as anybody died and they wanted an attic clearing, which is a business today..
Who was it he went in partnership with?
R- It was a fella called Smith. Actually he was the local bandmaster.
What was his full name?
R- Joseph Smith. There were four brothers of them, one was a photographer. He had a shop up top of Wapping nearly opposite Clough Mill gates only on the other side.
Aye that's it yes, that studio there, they've just made it into a garage for the house.
R- That's it. Well, we had our wedding photographs taken there. That was another Smith. The other two Smiths Hugh and Albert were tacklers and then eventually they branched out and they rented Bracewell Hall and they opened it up as a Country Club. but anyway that’s digressing from the task in hand.
Yes because I want to know a bit about Bracewell Hall when we get round to it. Anyway, we'll call that a do for that tape Arthur.
(1004)
SCG/08 May 2003
6,889 words.
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 78/AL/04
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 18th OF SEPTEMBER 1978 AT HEY FARM, BARNOLDSWICK. THE INFORMANT IS ARTHUR ENTWISTLE, RETIRED ENGINEER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Now we were just on about your dads toy business weren’t we?
R - Yes.
And talking about the workshop at the bottom of Wapping..
R- That's right,
When he employed five men.
R - Well he employed, when I say five, he had a boy and three men and I worked there occasionally even though I was in the orchestra at that time, so I was free in the day. So with me father it made the five. It sounds a lot when you say he employed five, it was an overstatement because he was employed himself. And he were doing quite well there, as I said they went down buying up, derelict, we'll not say absolutely derelict tables, but furniture, tables and chairs. Bentwood chairs, strengthen 'em up, put new wooden rollers in the wringing machines, re-plane a square table top and give it a coat of varnish. Had 'em outside just round the front of that place at the bottom of Westgate there. And they used to sell stuff like Billy-oh of a Saturday morning. Naturally, what I mean, the stuff were cheap enough. A couple were getting married they wanted a wringing machine and they wanted a dolly tub, you'd got the goods to offer and it were cash on the nail. And the other partner was the bookkeeper and he’d do painting and decorating. And time went on and it came the annual holidays and when father came to check up, he hadn’t enough money, no more no less than just pay his way. So with that, the other fella had gone away for a week’s holiday with his family and me father started to look into things and he found out inaccuracies. In other words the chap had been cooking the books you know. And, that's besides the point in a way, there's just one little thing. It shows the attitude of mind my father had. He had a fella working for him and he was a turner and a reasonable fitter and he went to the old man one day he says how about me having a rise? Well the old man, just at that time, he was straining at the leash, you know what 1 mean, he were just paying his way, just a little bit above the odds, but keeping his head above water. He says to this chap “I can’t give you a rise at the moment Albert, we're just about holding us own.” This chap was a bit uppity, got a larger value of his own importance and his remark to my father was “Well, you couldn't manage without me.” So the old man studied a minute and he says “Well, suppose tha deed (If you died) we’d have to manage without thee wouldn't we?” He says “Oh well, I suppose you would.” So the old man says “Well, tha can consider thee self bloody dead! Tha’rt finished!” [Arthur laughs] That was the old man.
[Stanley laughs]
(5 mins)
R- No sooner the word than the blow. But anyway, I think he tried everything, but his enemy always was drink and not paying his bills. Oh he got a very unenviable reputation in the town which I think I found the family as a whole, when I say the family, all the branches of the family. He put a certain amount of discredit on the name of the family in the town but that's been lived down and proved otherwise because I mean to say, one swallow doesn’t make a summer. And one bad egg doesn’t make a basket full of bad eggs.
You were saying something about your dad and Isaac Levi?
R - Oh this was during the war, actually during the war. My aunt Annie who was a maiden lady, a spinster if you like, a young woman and she had her mother living with her, my grandmother of course, and..
Is this on your mother's side or your fathers?
R - My mother’s paternal side, this is in Market Street incidentally. And she'd bought her furniture from, I think it was Isaac Levi, but it was one of the brothers. But we'll say Isaac and she used to pay with a little black book which he marked in and when she finished paying, she'd actually paid him for the furniture and a week or two elapsed and he sent her a letter that if she didn't pay for the furniture he’d bring it back you see. Well I don't know how or why or whether the book was lost or what but my dad happened to come home on leave at that time and he was in the Royal Field Artillery. Now whether he was officially allowed to carry a side arm, which was a revolver, I don't know but he had brought this revolver back with him on leave Of course aunty was in tears about this furniture being taken back because you can imagine, when you'd struggled and struggled. He [Isaac Levi] had a bloody bad reputation for bilking people like that you know. So the old man he went up
(100)
to the shop and he says “Narthen. What about this bloody furniture of Annie Fishwicks?” Oh he blustered and the old man pulled his revolver out and said “Now look, tha knows as well as I know that that lass has paid for that furniture. Now, Before I leave here I want a bloody signed receipt from you absolving her from all debt 'cause she's paid for what she's got. Or I’ll put a bloody bullet through you.” Well he so terrified the Jew that he could have been in serious trouble, but never-the-less he pulled it off. She had actually paid for the furniture and of course as I said I was a school lad and this all looked a tremendous bloody thing to me and I wanted to hear it used, like you shot your gun tonight. (I'd shot a rabbit in our field with my .410 single barrel gun while Arthur was there.) So we went a walk down Butts beck way which were all hen pens then, below the model lodging house. And taking a careful look round he fired five bullets, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang just as quick as that into the beck. It seemed a terrifying noise to me. Anyway the end of that revolver was that Doctor Glen got it as a war souvenir, money passed hands of course. Funnily enough Doctor Glen sort of took a fancy to my old man. I think I told you earlier he did want to put money in as a sleeping partner, which might have been a good thing for me father. In other word he would have had a break from his ruthless and stupid activities. 'Cause I always say now, there's Broughton’s, the business on the new road there, he taught him all he knows which might not be a lot and he [Harry Broughton] got the title Pigeon Milk because my dad sent him out of the workshop to get some Pigeon Milk. The old man was literally running a school of wood turning and another of his pupils were Bobby Lambert, now they finished up with businesses and the old man finished up with nothing. Which is ironic when you think about it. I don't suppose that's really of any importance to this enquiry here but…
No. Don't be so silly Arthur, this is all pure gold. Knowing me, do you think I'd be sat here if I thought you were waffling? It's fascinating man, fascinating. Don't worry, if I think you’re going off the track I’ll drag you back on quick, or if I think you're getting bogged down. I mean this is far better than ‘did the family have grace before meals’ or owt like that. I know you did but anyway let's get on. What we were actually talking about was musical instruments and the polyphone.
(150) (10 mins)
R- Well the polyphone was almost an article of furniture. Possibly used in some emporium somewhere because it had a penny in the slot mechanism with it. It would be about four foot tall and today..
Your dad didn't by any chance make you put pennies in it did he? [laughs]
R- Well you put pennies in but the drawer wasn't locked at the bottom and you got your penny back....
Oh I see, aye.
R- You know, the penny just tipped in a tray, a lever that just allowed the mechanism to perform its cycle. Oh in trade he’d had quite a high powered microscope, gold rings, sovereigns, two pound pieces, five pound pieces..
Yes. Now just hold on a minute, I told you, you’re digressing now, we're on about musical instruments.
R - Ah musical instruments.
And this must lead in to your musical career.
R - Well the starting of my musical career, this might sound very silly, but before the war my dad came out of the Royal Marines and he was in the Royal Marines Artillery Band as a percussionist. And he was, I wouldn't say he was a virtuoso on the mouth organ but he could play the mouth organ, Ocarina and Tin whistle like nobody's business and he sort of got me interested. But his main object was to get me interested to take up the drums to join the local band, which mother had drummed into me as a youngster so much, the evils of drink and the old man getting drunk. Being a member of a band was synonymous with becoming a drunkard in my juvenile mind. Anyway there was a fella, I’m not digressing because this is part of the story, there was a fella lived down the Butts in those yards at the back of the Seven Stars. There's some yards isn’t there. And I never knew that he worked in all his life. He was an expert on the bagpipes, the violin, tin whistle, two tin whistle's together, ocarina you name it and he could knock a tune out of it
Who was this fella?
R - It was a chap called Dan Wellock a ne’er-do-well as I said, I never knew him work in all his life. And I believe from hearing the old man reminisce and him and Dan reminiscing they used to go busking. Dan went with the pipes and father went with the drum, side drum and they used to go busking up the streets and get beer money. This was before the war you know. He must have been newly married, probably before I was born. But he kept on and on at me about learning to drum and I kept putting it off,
(200)
and shying it off until I was in bed in St. James Square. I was in bed and he brought the bass drum home from the brass band and he brought a side drum home and stand and he had mother, I nearly said the old woman, holding a mouth organ for him while he were playing a march on the mouth organ and giving it the old drum beats and the lot with it. Well to me it sounded fascinating and I was down those stairs like a bloody buck rabbit you know.
How old were you?
R - About fourteen. So anyway….
Just one thing Arthur. Fourteen, you'd be working then.
R – I was working yes. I was working and he prevailed on me, I finally gave in to take lessons.
Just one thing, I'm sorry to interrupt you, just so that I can get it straight in my own mind, so's we can keep this straight afterwards. Your first job actually was apprentice at the tinsmith's weren’t it?
R - I did so long at the tinsmiths. I started at twelve years old I remember.
Yes. But that was your first job wasn’t it?
R - That was my first job.
Yes. Well you go on with music Arthur. I've got it straight in my mind now, we can straighten it up after.
R- Yes, well that firm banked and me mother insisted I went to learn to weave so she said tha'll allus have a trade in thee hands.
(15 mins)
And I think I would be weaving at that time.
Aye, so you shot down stairs.
R- And my interest and enthusiasm, he must have sparked something off in the blood because I’d two uncles that were drum majors. As I said, our family was a military family actually mainly in India. Just to prove that back, great grandfather come from India well off with selling whisky to the natives which he shouldn't have done. He had his own yacht and the very thing he was selling killed him, the whisky killed him at the finish with drinking it. But anyway the family must have had at some time a good standing if you follow what I mean. I mean the family background basically, I'm not talking about my father. Anyway the old man prevailed on me to take up percussion but before that I'd been going down to Dan's, coming back to Dan Wellock and he were learning me how to play a flute and ocarina and learned me to play two tin whistles together, which I think was all part and parcel of the old man getting me interested in music in an elementary sort of a way. He was a drummer himself and he started to teach me and then he sent me to Blackburn every Saturday morning to an uncle of mine who had been a drum major in the army and who was a percussionist himself.
How did you get to Blackburn?
R – Train from Barlick. station. Change at Colne on to Blackburn.
So you’d have to change at Earby an all?
R- Well you had to change at Earby, we didn't count that as a change. You know it was commonplace changing at Earby. Well why I mentioned Colne was because Colne was the demarcation line between the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and the London Midland and Scottish so that you always had to change off one train on to the other at Colne.
Yea, now that's a funny thing because it was the London and Midland and Scottish that used to run the Barlick Light Railway weren’t it. [Midland railway up to 1923 when LMS was constituted]
R - That's correct, yes.
And yet the line at Earby then would in earlier days have been the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. [I was wrong here]
R- No it was the LMS, Colne is further on isn't it. You go to Earby and you go that way and you go to Colne and Burnley.
Yes but.. Ah, so the Skipton to Colne line was London Midland.
R- LMS yes.
Now how did, well the Lancashire and Yorkshire, did they have Colne. Were they at Colne, Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway?
R- Well that was the, how can we put this, you could call it the boundary station if you like between the two locomotive companies. Although there was a joint, each used the station. But the Lancashire and Yorkshire train which was a different colour than the LMS didn't run to Earby or Skipton, it stopped at Colne. And you had to change to an LMS train that was going North shall we say. Anyway as I say, I had to go to Colne and on to Blackburn every Saturday morning by train and I'd to walk quite a distance in Blackburn and a female cousin used to come and meet me because I didn’t know the way. And I’d to have lessons on the drums and
(300)
then I got proficient enough that I was taken on in the local band. Well if this is of any interest to you or to the subject I don't know, but I had peculiar experiences with this. There was a young fella in the Barnoldswick band who played the side drum. His father was the bass drummer and he was such a notorious liar and such a notorious romancer that he had the popular name of ‘Biscuit’. In other words, 'he takes the bloody biscuit'. You know what 1 mean, when he told you something, and he got the name Biscuit.
(20 mins)
What was his reight name?
R - Oh dear, dear, dear. You see that's the difficult thing. When you come to people that had nick-names and they used them all their life very often the surname disappears into the back of your memory.
Don’t let that worry you, it'll come back to you. You’re all right.
R- But he lived in Calf Hall Road and I’ll just give you an idea of his romancing. Now they wanted to sack this bloke out of the band because he was unreliable.
The liar, Biscuit.
R – This Biscuit we'll call him from now on. In other words he’d have an engagement booked somewhere and Biscuit ud fail to turn up and then he’d turn up another time when he thought fit. Well when I was competent enough to take over he was sacked out of the band. Now here's a peculiar thing now, this is where a string of coincidences comes between this certain individual and myself. He got a job drumming with Tom Bolton's band which was the Victor Silvester of his day.
Tommy?
R- Tommy Bolton. And the same thing applied there very often, he didn't turn up. You understand what I mean, he was not only a liar he was unreliable and I followed him into Tommy Bolton's band.
Where did Tommy Bolton's band hang out?
(350)
R- Oh, all round the countryside here, Con Club, Earby Con Club, Country dances like the local hops. He was the Victor Silvester of his day, strict tempo type. Then of course competitions between the cinemas started to become rife and they formed an orchestra at the Majestic Cinema. And this Biscuit got in the orchestra at the Majestic Cinema. Well the same thing applied there, he started to fail to turn up, and the beginning really of my musical career, what you might term professionally, was on Christmas Day of this particular year. I can’t just remember the year exactly but it ud be, it was in the twentys anyway. We’d just had Christmas dinner when Fred Hartley who was the manager of the Majestic Cinema knocked at the door, and of course the old man asked him in and he wanted to know what was I doing that particular day. This was Boxing Day, I'm telling a lie, it wasn't Christmas Day because you weren’t allowed to open the cinema on Christmas Day. Boxing day, but apparently earlier on he’d failed to turn up and I’ll never forget the picture because to me, I was a musician, in other words I’d been taught to read in all the clefs, you know what I mean, apart from just the dots and dashes that you require for drumming. And in the silent pictures it wasn't only your duty to play music, the music was adapted to the theme or the scene. Say it was a wedding scene or a sick room scene, music appropriate to the scene had to be played, the result was that you'd play short passages of some pieces of music and then segue, that was a term we used, just straight into another and you had a cue sheet came with the film for the musical director.
Yes now, one thing, sorry. What did you say, segue?
R - Segway or segue, but I always pronounced it, being ignorant, SEGUE, but I think the correct pronunciation because it's Italian was ‘segway’.
Yes right.
(25 mins)
R- In other words straight away into the next piece.
Yes.
R- Anyway the drummer in those days, they used to say the orchestra comprised of ten musicians and a drummer. [laughs] Father, he wasn’t counted
(400)
as a musician. So it became the drummer’s job to be the librarian of the band, put the music out before the orchestra came every night and see that it was all in order on the stand and you had the cue sheet, because you weren’t doing as much playing. There were lots of passages where the drummer and whatever weren’t required. So you had to watch the film and when you got a sub-title which could be a cue for the change of music or a particular action in a scene would be a cue for a sound effect. We'd boxes with broken glass in, we’d wind machines, we’d thunder sheets, cow calls, bird whistles, duck calls and all these used to be put in, with an efficient orchestra, the sounds. Anyway I'm overrunning again.
You're not..
R- I'm saying about this lad Biscuit, he exhausted all his potentialities locally, when I say locally I mean Barlick, Earby and Colne and just immediate locality and the last occasion I ever met him was, the bandmaster of Earby Band was Squire Firth who, incidentally, it's not commonly known now, but he was the composer of that hymn 'Rimington'. [Arthur was mistaken here. Rimington was composed by Francis Duckworth who lived for many years in the village of Rimington with Middop. He is buried in Gisburn churchyard and the tune is commemorated on his headstone.]
Did you say Squire?
R- We called him Squire Firth. Whether he was a squire I don't really know.
Yes that's it. And he composed Rimington,
R - He composed Rimington and his son, who was unfortunately killed in world war one, was the worlds champion boy cornettist, his son. Of course I'm speaking now of the hey-day when brass bands were brass bands.
Yes there is just one thing, just to get it straight. When you speak about Barlick. Band, what was it's official title Arthur?
R - Barnoldswick Prize Brass Band.
Aye.
R - They had won prizes.
Yes.
R- And we became a more famous concert band afterwards but I will come back to Biscuit..
Yes.
R- The last occasion I ever met him before he disappeared from the scene of this locality was at the death of Squire Firth who lived in Earby and we had mass bands, we played the Dead March from Earby to Thornton church.
(450)
With the massed bands and it was muffled drums along with, well the bands you know, you get your massed bands sort of joined together. That were the last I ever saw of him. The last I heard of him he went on the boats, now whether he actually did or actually didn’t, I did hear that he was drowned at sea but when I say he was a liar, he had a vivid imagination and as an instrumentalist he was thirty years ahead of his time, if you follow what I mean. He was thirty years in advance of what a tap drummer, as a dance band drummer was called then, was expected to do. He would have been on a par with at the time when Carol Gibbons Band came later on in the scene. I believe he was a marvellous drummer but he was so way out he didn't stick to the music in any shape or form But he was so far out that they considered him mad. And I think he was slightly mad because he buttonholed me one day on Church Street and he persuaded me to go up to his house.
(30 mins)
Now it was an ordinary working man's house like, and he was telling me the yarn that he’d got a Wurlitzer organ up in the loft, he’d got a full size marimba, Timpani, xylophone, Glockenspiel, Tubular bells all up in his music room. A Wurlitzer organ mark you, were just barely coming on the blinking scene. I think he lived in a dream world and that’s why. He used to romance so much he got the nickname Biscuit but
(500)
anyway inadvertently he was responsible for launching me on my musical career.
One little thing, I'm not quite sure of the date, but when you were playing in the orchestra at the Majestic, oh no you'd be later, did you ever know Mrs. Clark? Billy Clark's wife, she played the violin in the orchestra at the Majestic.
R- It could have been the Majestic, the only outstanding thing about names that I remember at both the Majestic orchestra and the Palace orchestra was rather a peculiar thing. In the Majestic orchestra the conductor of the orchestral society was the flautist, Roy Trafford. He won the all England clarinettist award of the year. He played the clarinet, 1 can't remember the name of the woman on the violin. I remember the bass player, they called him Tommy Brown and there was Arthur, an Arthur somebody on the violin.
It wasn't Newsome was it?
R- It could have been but I can't swear to it. And Arthur somebody who played the piano and myself who was on the drums. And anyway I was on contract there, as young as I was, and I signed a contract at Steele & Son Solicitors office. Signed, stamped and sealed, and I think it was one of the occasions where the old man put a bit of pressure on Fred Hartley because the competition between the two cinemas was acute and I think he got a lump sum of money on the strength of my contract, you understand what 1 mean. To sign the contract but anyway.
(550)
Now there’s one thing there I must just hold you up again. You say the competition between the two was acute, now I take it you mean between the Palace, which is now the Bingo hall and the Majestic Cinema. Now which was built first Arthur, the Palace or the Majestic?
R- The Majestic was built first.
Any idea when that was built?
R - Well 1 think, wait a bit, I think it was started to be built about 1912, but I think if you walk down Frank Street, I remember war had just started, the first film I ever saw there as a young lad, I think it was 1914 that it was opened and I remember the film was Charlie Chaplin. And I think it was Fred Hartley, that's the old man, the old Fred Hartley, who was the manager's father. There were four brothers of them, one was the Hartley of the theatre, he literally built Barlick. He built all the shops on Church street, he built the Majestic cinema and what is the ballroom. And the billiard room above which I don't know whether it’s still there on not and all those shops on that block at the front, Fred Hartley built. He was an architect and he built Station Chambers across the road. He had visions of what Barlick might develop into. The sort of a place it might develop to be. Now he didn't build the Palace, but if you remember there's a stone built building across, I don't know what it's used for now, but it was built as a billiard hall. (I later found that Arthur was mistaken, it was built as a swimming pool and the Hartley was Matthew.)
across from?
R - It's a stone building. Say you are going on the square [St James] now off Church Street. You're going off Church Street towards St. James Square and the
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front of the Palace.
Is on your right, yes.
R - Well if you follow the road there's a building there on the top of the hill which was built as a billiard saloon.
Now is that on the same side as the Palace or on the other side?
R- Well the Palace wasn't in existence. He’d planned, he’d got plans in his mind that St. James Square ultimately would have gone and that ud have been a main street, but it was never concluded, war of course put an end to it and the billiard saloon became Phineas Brown’s garage. It were made into a garage and that was the first place I ever saw ice being made. He had a plant down there for making blocks of ice which of course the butchers, fishmongers, domestic people, you could buy a block of ice and break it up and well you know the system, packing things in ice to keep it. Phineas Brown was a very enterprising bloke. Motor mechanic, engineer, I don't know what the place is now.
Now then, so that’s the Palace and the Majestic in competition.
R- The Palace and the Majestic in competition after the war.
Now you'll know quite a bit about the Majestic won't you, you know little bits and pieces. There's something I'd like to know if you know anything about it. There was a liner called the Majestic.
R- Correct.
Now as I understand it that ship was broken up and Fred Hartley bought some stuff off it.
R- If you walk to the top of the steps now, to the entrance of the Majestic you’ll see some wood panelling and if you look at it carefully, a lot of people wouldn't notice it, it has the curvature of the decks and he bought a tremendous amount of the saloon, you know what I mean, the best saloon wall furnishings. Panelling and it was used extensively in the foyer and in the cinema itself. Old Fred Hartley [Arthur was confused here, here means Matthew Hartley], when he built it all. Now his son [Fred Hartley was the son of Matthew and main man in Hartley Brothers] was artistic, when I say artistic I don't mean a decorator in the sense of the word of putting white wash on the wall, he was an artistic bloke and very talented. He changed the decor in that place several times and there were one of the pictures, as I said they were silent pictures where, what do they call them the proscenium arch. They had a false one because the screen was on a wall and the back of the wall was the engine house and dynamos to give power to all the building and the shops. He closed it for so long and when he reopened it he had like a minaret.. with windows and all the ceiling was stars, blue and stars and the décor, he’d done it himself you know, like murals as we call it today. And he was a very artistic fellow. I remember one picture where, it might have been the Desert Song or something similar if you can visualise it, he had a woman in one tower and a bloke in the other tower and at the appropriate times these two people were singing. He used to do all sorts of counter attractions to put a better show on than standard. But of course the Majestic was never able to put on a live show, like a variety or a pantomime or even the choral society, they couldn't even give concerts. Well of course the Palace..
Why not?
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R - Because it never had a stage.
Aye.
R- It never had a stage at all. He built a false stage with this arch and proscenium front. And for some reason or other, musicians are very temperamental people. It was my job, I was the youngest in the orchestra and I don't think 1’d be sixteen and with being the librarian and going there earlier I used to listen to all the gossip. Just to give you an idea, the clarinettist ud come in first and he’d tune his instrument up to the piano sit down and then, he’d say “If that bloody violinist plays my solo tonight I’ll hit him over the bloody head” this is back-biting. Then you'd get the pianist coming and held be back-biting against somebody else, “He took my passage last night I should have had that.” little
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bits of bickering that didn’t come out in the open but I was the recipient of it all. I got to be a bit morbid about this, I thought well if they’re talking about one another like that they must be talking about me. So anyway there were Arthur Harper, Arthur Nutter and Lizzy Daly, they were the trio at the Palace Theatre and they were advertising for a drummer, so I got so fed up with the Majestic business, plus with the Palace the prospect of live shows, which was opening my field of experience a bit more, I broke
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my contract and went to the Palace. Now Hartley never sued my father nor sued me for breach of contract and I can honestly say that popular sheet music was coming into the vogue in those days. Bye, bye Blackbird, and from the music publishers you had two versions of music. They had what was called the song edition and you had what was the jazz or dance band edition. Now at the Majestic we always had the dance band version which was more snappy, more alive. The Palace had the song versions which were insipid compared with the other. And I mentioned it to Arthur Harper, he was the leader of the orchestra, such as it was. He eventually became manager of the Majestic Cinema up to his death.
Of the Majestic?
R - Yes, after the Palace closed down in the years after I’d left you know. And as I said we had quite a good little orchestra there and of course had the benefit of the live shows, variety, a different kind of presentation. The kicks when the chorus girls came on, the high kicks you know, you’d get the percussion effect of them hitting something.
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Well they do it today on TV. And then there was the talkies came in, and when I had to take my instruments home, I lived on the farm, I had to have a flat four wheeled cart because I’d a wind machine, thunder sheet, all sound effects, tubular bells, timpani, the full drum kit which it took a lorry to take my stuff back up to the farm. I stuck it in the spare room and for twelve month I never did anything. You understand what I mean. I wasn't a member of a band or nothing. A dance band I mean. Now at that time, in the thirties, jazz was becoming the thing and I thought after twelve month, I thought I look well, there's all this stuff in this room here wasting. So I formed a band. I got one or two lads but I couldn't got hold of a saxophonist for love nor money. Now a saxophone peculiarly enough was an instrument that had always fascinated me, you know what I mean. It was so different from any other instrument because all the pads at the side were, we used to call them like pan lids. You know what I mean and the sound of them. And it was an instrument that fascinated me. I couldn't get hold of a saxophonist so I had a pair
(S50)
of timpani upstairs that I'd only had twelve month before I was redundant and I'd got all my equipment from R S Kitchen and Company, Queen Victoria Street, Leeds. Oh, I’d spent hundreds of pounds with them literally. So I wrote to them saying that I had these timpani in mint condition and I was desirous of purchasing a saxophone, what would they allow me, you know. Course we were living with the wife's people at this time. The old man had the old Model T Ford and when I got the letter back to say yes bring the timpani in, we'll examine them and see what condition they are and we’ll talk business, well he drove me to Leeds in the old Ford with no roof on. You
know what I mean, it had a canvas top folded back. Two timpani in the back seat. Father in law and meself off to Leeds down Queen Victoria Street. Gets in the shop, of course he knew me personally as soon as I went in. It were a three storey high shop and he just opened the speaking tube, took the cork out of the speaking tube, spoke upstairs to somebody. Two men came down with aprons on, they made instruments and that there even in those days. Took these two timpani upstairs and never looked at 'em. He said “Narthen Mr
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Entwistle, what were you interested in?” I said “Well actually I'm interested in a saxophone.” He said “What make?” Well of course to me a saxophone was a saxophone. I said “I’m not really certain. I want one like that’s modern with all the automatic keys on. So it was Wednesday and it was early closing and we’d got there about half past eleven. He said “Well, I’ve not got a lot of time to spend with you because I got done last week because I had the shop open a few minutes after twelve o’clock.” So he calls one of the assistants who brings a case, out comes this instrument, he shows it to me, puts it together, puts a tutor book in, he says “Now I can't give you a lesson!” He said “If you’re satisfied, that's it, that's a deal.” I thought well, fair enough, I'm quite happy with it. I’d got a saxophone for some instruments that I couldn't use. I mean to say, you couldn’t cart timpani about, they’re purely an orchestral instrument. And the saxophone I taught meself to play and branched out with me first dance band.
What did you call it Arthur?
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R- The first band was ‘The Rhythm Boys’. Yes, there's one or two members still living in the town who played with me at that day.
Well, we'll finish at that.
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SCG/08 May 2003
6,355 words.
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 78/AL/05
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 21st OF SEPTEMBER 1978 AT HEY FARM, BARNOLDSWICK. THE INFORMANT IS ARTHUR ENTWISTLE, RETIRED ENGINEER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Right Arthur we’re away again, we're recording. I just want to clear one or two things up to right at the beginning of this tape before we go on any further. You generally find when you've done a couple of tapes there's one or two loose ends. Would you say that it was common for children to stand at the table, as you had to do before you started to work, in Barnoldswick at that time, or do you think your father was being a bit old fashioned?
R- I wouldn’t say every family was addicted to that habit but several families were because I remember my wife when she was a school girl, the two girls lived so far out of town on the farm that it was impossible for them to go home to dinner and they had their dinner at Bell's Dairy who of course, obviously farmers and dairies were a connection, and they had to stand at their meals there but never at home. Only when they were having meals at this particular house. Now I can't say it was a universal custom when I say several families did it, but of course at that age one only had a small circle of acquaintances so you can't speak for the whole town.
Now another thing you were on about, going round to different engagements you know, like when you had your own orchestra, when you were playing for other people. How did you move your instruments about because I mean, you'd be handicapped being a drummer?
R - Well you did it the hard way. You’d have the base drum under one arm, a case full with the side drum and implements in the other and very often one had to make two journey's carrying these physically from home to say, the Con. Club, Albert Hall or Co-op Hall as the case may be. And then again the same thing happened afterwards, you had them to carry home but, when we was playing out of town, you lumped everything into a taxi and on to the taxi and it made a different pleasurable job altogether of playing. I once did a job at Burnley, I went to the rehearsal of a composer who was trying to get on the BBC and of course obviously I couldn't take all my equipment, but I just took the side drum. brushes, castanets and things that gave colour to the various pieces we were going to play, and we had no bass drum which was a big bulky thing, but everything had to be carried in those days.
Aye. Then the talkies came in. I've heard you say that it was November 1932 when the talkies hit Barlick.
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R - well it hit me in November 1932. But that doesn't mean to say the talkies came into that particular place at once. They came into the Majestic at first obviously.
Aye, because you were at the Palace weren’t you.
R - I was at the Palace and I think that if my memory serves me rightly the Palace more or less lay dormant because obviously, talking pictures was a great attraction then. If you could fill the Majestic every night it could cover the costs without two lots of expenditure. Eventually the talkies did get to the Palace but I couldn't say just which year or when.
Yes and when they did come, was that automatically the end of the orchestra?
R- It was the end of the orchestra yes as a, shall we say as a full time job. You got crumbs off the table, as one might term it. When the local choral society had their do at the Palace Theatre you'd a job for the week. Then you got a Pantomime or the odd Variety show which was well spaced apart, infrequently shall we say.
(5 mins)
R- And we just had one advantage, with Fred Hartley having a place at Skipton. If there was a pantomime at the Palace you travelled with them to Skipton the following week by special bus and did the show there. But virtually it was the end of the [era] you know, more or less full time work for an orchestra in the cinema. Well it was, to musicians in this country it was a dreadful impact because in London alone there was ten thousand musicians out of work.
Is that so!
R - Actually so.
Now, I’m sorry Arthur, you've said that and now I'll have to push you. How do you know there was ten thousand musicians out of work in London? What basis have you for saying that?
R- Well, having been a professional musician, we used to get a newspaper weekly called The ERA, which was purely a professional paper for musicians and artists. Advertising, you know, well of course you had the news in as well and what was going on in the music world at the time.
Yes.
R - And I can honestly say and I think I'm quite accurate, if the records could be looked up there were ten thousand musicians out of work, in London alone.
Good enough Arthur, good enough. You must excuse me doing things like that to you but I'm not going to let you get away with statements like that without finding your sources. Now when we were talking about your father and with the business at the bottom of Wapping he was in partnership with a gentleman shall we call him, by the name of Joseph Smith.
R - Correct yes.
And you happened to mention at the time that Joseph Smith and his brothers were instrumental in making Bracewell Hall into a country club. Now can you tell me what you know about that?
R- Not Joseph Smith..
Oh I'm sorry..
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R- Hugh Smith. He was one of the, there was four brothers. There was Hugh Smith and then I forget the name of the oldest brother..[Albert Smith]
It’s right it'll come back.
R – Anyway, Joe was the band master. He was the local band master and music teacher.
So Joe actually had nothing to do with Bracewell Hall.
R- No nothing at all no.
Oh It was the two tacklers then.
R- It was the two tacklers.
Right well you go on and tell your tale Arthur.
R- And they got their heads together and I suppose the money as well and they opened it up as a country club Posh club.
One thing, where were they tackling?
R – Edmondson’s Fernbank.
Good.
R - I think Hugh, the younger brother of the partnership, after a bit gave his job up to run the club. Well obviously somebody had to be there, on the organising side during the day and then later on his older brother gave up work, because it became a successful venture because they opened it out into what we would call today a leisure centre. There was a lake attached to it in the grounds, they opened it up for swimming. Tennis courts, midget golf and of course there was a beautiful ballroom, it being an old building, one of the finest places I've played in for the acoustics if you follow what I mean. Playing in a place with the acoustics so good, it was marvellous. But if I’m not taking too much time up, I’ll digress. It was the Mecca of all local bands to try and get a job at this Bracewell Hall because you used to get bands from Keighley and Leeds. Well obviously, in the town here at that time, you could have a Saturday night dance from a shilling to two shilling, just depends what it was. Well at Bracewell Hall the entrance fee to the dance alone was seven and six (7/6p) which was making it highly selective in that day. And there was a musician friend of mine, we were both out of work, he said let's have a run round and see if we can drum a few jobs up for the band like. Oh and coming back…
One thing Arthur, sorry to interrupt you when we’re talking about the band, are we talking about the Rhythm Boys now?
R- No. I’m talking about his band.
Yes, which was?
R- The Broadway and..
Sorry, I’ll have to do it again, what was his name Arthur?
R- Gladney Bracewell.
Gladney?
R- Bracewell, Sid Bracewell’s brother that lives down here.
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Oh yes Sid's brother, yes.
R - Well we lived next door to one another of course.
Yes right.
R- And we went out on the motor bike. Anyway we're coming past Bracewell Hall and Glad said to me, “What do you say if we call in and see Albert Smith?
That's it. Hugh's brother.
R- Course they knew me with having worked at the Fernbank and of course with having been associated with one of the brothers for a long time, the music man. {Joseph Smith the bandmaster] So we called in and swapped fags and chit chat and then eventually I thought it looks like I'm going to have to be spokesman, so I said “Well I dare say you know what we've came to see you about Albert.” He says “Yes. I know very well Arthur. Now look, don’t misunderstand me. I don't doubt
your band is as good as any band that I get here but you've got to look at it from my point of view and a business point of view. You play at a lot of dances in the town where people can only afford to pay a shilling, one and six or what have you. Now people come here and pay seven and six to dance to a band. Now honestly, do you think that I could get people to come here and listen to a band and pay seven and six for a band who they can hear for a shilling?” Which, I thought about that a lot afterwards and it was rather funny. Later on I decided to form a new band which was a novelty band on the American Calypso style with accordions and all the rhythm instruments and we dressed in the bolero Spanish style.
What did you call them?
R- El Bonito.
That was a waltz or a piece of music that wasn't it, Bonito?
R- No. It could have been but it's, El Bonito actually means The Good.
Yes , right.
R - The Good. Anyway I trained these boys for about six months and at that time the musicians union rate was half-a-crown (2/6d.) an hour. But there was a lot of undercutting going on because musicians were desperate to work. They’re cutting it from half-a- crown an hour to two bob. Well having learned a lesson from this chap Albert about respective values. When I started out, the first job I had was in the Co-op Hall above the Co-op. Not the Co-op hall further down, but above the Co-op [on Albert Road] There was a local tennis club and that was the only job I ever tendered for and I charged double the union rate. I stuck my neck right out, I charged five shilling an hour per man plus expenses. Before the night was out I'd three bookings
(200)
on the slate and I never put in for another tender again. Now the moral of the story is, at Easter the Smith brothers opened Bracewell Hall for the season and they closed it down at Christmas, actually Boxing Day night dance was the last night until the following Easter. Now it gave me great pleasure because Albert, with being the senior brother, contracted me to play for them to open them at Easter, the first dance of the season, which naturally I stuck the price on to him and I got it without any trouble and for the years after that, while I was here, we always started at Easter and finished on Christmas Eve. We used to have a job in the town here, finish at quarter to twelve, they'd have a taxi waiting at the door. While the last waltz was being played we were packing the instruments up, straight into the taxi, down to Bracewell Hall, started playing there at one o'clock in the morning until five. So we opened the season for him and finished it for him. Now I learnt a lesson there which I think is relevant today, there's a lot can be in a name and there's a lot can be in the value you put upon yourself.
(15 mins)
You’re right Arthur, you’re quite right. I agree with that, and so Bracewell Hall was a successful venture and went on.
R- A very successful venture but I left the town, either fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be, 1939 New Year's Day. Well actually I was working at the Majestic ballroom on New Year's Eve and that was my last job I did in Barnoldswick 'cause I moved away from the town on New Year's Day.
What eventually happened to Bracewell Hall? Do you know?
R- Well, not living in the town and having very little communication with people, 'cause we only had the wife's mother left here eventually who obviously wouldn't have any interest in what we're discussing now, well I heard that Bracewell Hall had been dismantled. But I find out this time, coming up to Barnoldswick that such is not the case. That Bracewell Hall is still there. I haven't been down to see for myself, because it stands back off the main road behind the church so you can't see it from the road, never could. But sometime I’ll make it my way to go down and see if it’s still there. [Arthur was wrong here. The hall was demolished in 1954 I think and prior to this there had been a fire if I remember rightly. I don’t think it was used after the Rover Company moved out after using it for offices during WW2.]
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Yes very good Arthur. Now then one other question about the music in the town. From the way you've been talking it seems to me that there was far more live music about in Barnoldswick then than there is now?
R- Oh definitely.
Yes. Now can you start and just give me a bit of a run down in the town of the different orchestras, choral societies, bands, string quartets, buskers, anything you like.
R- Well we had a very successful brass band..
Which was?
R- The Barnoldswick Prize Brass Band. Famous mainly for it's concert work, did a tremendous amount of concert work because it was the boast of our band master Mr Joseph Smith that we didn't need a Sunday suit because we was out in uniform every Sunday. We’d be either at Blackburn where they have one or two parks. You’d play at one park in the afternoon. Shoot across town, have your tea and play at another park in the evening. Played as far away as Bradford, Blackburn mid-week when there's early closing day at the shops, that’s with the brass band.
So for the brass band the usual sort of venue was a public park?
R- Yes we did a lot of concert work. Both indoors and outside.
Now run down through the others for me. There'll be other organisations.
R - We had a successful orchestral society, obviously they're limited in an orchestral society very much. In other words, the balance is against them as opposed to a brass band. For instance a stringed instrument, you've got to be static, you've got to be on a stage. You’d probably give two concerts in the year. String quartets..
Now wait a minute, let's stick with the orchestra for a minute. Where did they hang out, for want of a better term?
R- Well we practiced in the Con Club on Sunday morning.
Did you say we?
R - Well I was a member of the orchestra.
Oh, you were a member were you at one time?
R - Oh yes, I was a timpanist.
Yes and you used to practice in the Con Club on Sunday morning.
R- Then of course we gave the usual concerts, happen two a year, in the Palace.
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Yes.
R - When you come to, if I may drop down now to what we call string quartets. At that time of day amongst better class people it was the custom to have what they call ‘At Homes’. Of course it grew bigger eventually where you'd have an ‘at home’ with cotton factories competing against each other to raise funds for the hospital. But I remember playing, being invited to a party and out of the guests at the party, informally, we formed a small orchestra of eight individuals. Which comprised of course piano, cello. Viola, bass fiddle and flute and clarinet. Quite a good orchestra in, well you wouldn't go any where today where you could say call out a member of a party and form a little orchestra like that. But that of course was the exception to the rule. I should think everybody, a lot of the lads in those days were interested. And of course we had a craze sweep from America again round the district, synonymous with the talkies, which was the ukulele banjo. At the time of ‘When I'm Cleaning Windows’ what's the fellows name?
(20 mins)
George Formby.
R- George Formby. About that time of course the ukulele became a predominant instrument amongst the youth. If you could play the mouth organ and ukulele you'd, you know what I mean, you could get along.
Yes. How common was it in those days Arthur for somebody to be able to play a musical instrument?
R - Well there wasn't many. Let's look at it this way, say in the 1936, things were starting to look up and a good many homes of, what shall I say, verging on to the upper end of the working class where they'd got one or two in the family working. Where they had a piano, and of course obviously went for lessons. And it wasn’t many party's or wherever you went where you couldn't get somebody who could play the piano. 'Cause obviously the piano was one of the first instruments that domestically was, well if you had a piano you was one up on the Jones's.
That’s it yes, yes I understand that.
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R- And if you had a daughter or a son that could play it were better still.
Yes. When did you first see your first radio set?
R- The first radio set. Well when Manchester opened up there was no such thing as radio shops in this town or any town. The nearest I can remember was, I started to build a radio, a two valve radio set and I had to go to Manchester to buy the components.
What year was this?
R- (Pause) ..I'm just trying to think.
You’re right, I’ll tighten the bands on you.
R- It's, oh I should say about twenty five, (1925) near as I can remember accurately.
There's just one thing about that Arthur. You've said a very interesting thing there. I've lived in the north of England all my life and when people have talked about radio I've always somehow assumed that, one thinks of ‘2LO calling’ you know.
R - Well you did have London..
Well I've always assumed somehow, whether I’m right or whether it's just an assumption with listening to programmes from London about the early days of the radio. I've always assumed that the radio station which could be picked up here was London, you know.
R – No. The only radio station you could pick up here and if you lived in the environs of Manchester, I don't know how many miles it could cover, but the first thing of course, the simple wireless if you like to call it that was a crystal set and a pair of earphones. And you had freak receptions, in other words you could get a reception happen fifty miles away, where they’d be normally getting a radius of thirty miles. And that's why you could have a crystal detector with a one valve amplifier. But as I say, there were no wholesale manufacturers of sets. I had to build my condensers myself. Buy the vanes, buy the screwed rod, spacing washers, ebonite discs and the solenoid to enclose the tuning condenser. Invariably you built 'em on a sloping desk. Well I built a two valve set and I'd exhausted all my finances with so doing.
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So that 1 couldn't afford to get the batteries. [laughs] because the batteries, there was no such thing as a specially built high tension battery. The only way you could get 120 volts working capacity was buying torch batteries. Of course in those days the torches were the flat battery. Buying enough of those to make a hundred and twenty volts, (120 volts) which invariably you had them in a damned long box.
Aye 1 ½ volts. Wait a minute, what were they, there were three cells in them, they were 4 ½ volts weren't they if I remember rightly, them flat batteries?
R – 4 ½ volts yes.
So you'd need, a quick reckon up, about thirty batteries wouldn't you? You'd need about twenty six batteries, sommat like that.
R- You’d thirty batteries and then you had to have a couple of low tension accumulators which was for the filament and this is where all the, Holdsworth and Phineas Brown and others, enterprising small engineers, reaped a rare old profit with charging batteries up for you.
Yes. Newton tells a good story about that. They had come Royce dynamos down at Moss Shed and he said the engine tenter [Stanley Fisher] there made more bloody money out of charging batteries than he did out of running the engine.
R- [Arthur laughs] Well he could.
He said he used to have the dynamo room full of radio batteries he said, “I think he charged every battery in Barlick in there.”
R - He could very well have done.
Aye.
R- But anyway, come back to the high tension, once you'd laid your money out in your high tension battery, the idea was you bought one battery a week and you started at one end of the box and you took one out and you put a new one in at this end and by doing this every week, you kept your voltage, well your amperage if you care to call it that, constant. Just sufficient capacity to keep the set running. Well funnily enough, the chap who got my set that I built was Joseph Smith the band master, and I remember being invited down to his house. There was no such thing as a loud speaker, and you'd sit round a table with terminal blocks there and you'd shove your earphones in, screwed 'em down and you were in business and with having valves you could get 2LO London in those days. And of course for such as myself interested in jazz music it was a virtual paradise because you could listen to the top class Kit Kat Club bands and, you know what I mean, at first class hotels.
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Yes but now wait a minute, you’ve said something there. I know what you mean. Now you've mentioned one band, the Kit Kat club band.
R- Harry Roy.
Was that Harry Roy?
R- Harry Roy was there for a bit.
Just name a few more names, you know, bands from that period.
R - Well there was Ambrose, Roy Fox, Harry Roy. There was another orchestra and there were two pianists were the leaders. I can't just call the name to mind. But every night, six nights a week, excluding Sunday of course, you could listen to one of the top hotel bands. And then of course as time went on I did a bit of wireless work for Wilkinson’s down below and it got to a pitch where screen grid valves came in and your reception was keener and you could get stations from far away. The big thing was being able to separate one station from another in the old days, and unless you had injected signal, in other words you narrowed your radio band down artificially with an induced signal manufactured by the set. The early sets were what we called on the reaction principle. You could turn a knob until it started to whistle and all the neighbours round about you were playing bloody hell. [laughs] Because it was transmitting it back on to their aerial. But I did a lot of wireless work where it got to the point where I needed more scientific instruments to make, to build these sets and test them as you went along. Then of course I dropped out of the rat race and electricity was coming into the town and of course the next thing was of course the mains sets were coming in with the mains energised speakers which give you a terrific booming bass. You know what
(500)
I mean, amplification far and beyond that you could ever have got with an ordinary battery set. As I say I used to go out repairing sets and my cousin Bill [Bill Entwistle] down below. I'd left I’d left Brogden, he was still living up Brogden. He had sommat went wrong with his set and at that time we weren't speaking. [Bill was a very acerbic character!]
(30 mins)
R- So he called a fella up, he had a fella come up who said he knew all about wireless. And of course a valve in the cabinet, valves sometimes are a bit stiff, and he pulls this valve out and It went pop against the roof of the cabinet you know. Well Bill give him his bloody marching orders because he’d buggered a valve up straight away and they weren't cheap in those days. And eventually I went up and got it going for him. There's another interesting thing here. This might not be important.
You keep saying that Arthur and then coming out with gems. Keep going!
R- But as I say I'd been called out up Brogden to repair a set and of course I stopped fairly late to hear the band and see that everything was working all right. I used to carry a little attaché case with me. Screw drivers and drills and tackle and pliers. You know what I mean, spare 2BA nuts and bolts and what have you. And so I was coming along the street at one o'clock in the morning. I lived in Ivy Terrace and I bumps into the sergeant and a copper.
Now there was a bridge then over the Butts Beck, where the Butts Mill still is, just a narrow bridge across. We met there, course as I might have said before, being George Handley's son-in-law I were more or less pretty well known and as a musician in the town. But of course, one o'clock in the morning and here am I with my bag which today a copper would have classed them as...
The instruments! [both laugh]
R- Instruments, burglar's tools. As a matter of fact the sergeant said to me he says “What's tha got in theer lad/” I says “Well, I've just been out repairing a wireless.” “Well” he says “Let's have a look what tha has inside.” Course I've got little drilling machine, you know, if you wanted to put another nut and bolts somewhere, screwdrivers and wire and soldering iron and, you know, all the bag of tricks. Course he were only being on the safe side, I could have been a burglar for all he knew but of course he could have substantiated my story any time with the wife’s father. But coming back to the early days of wireless, I tell some people this today, they don’t believe it, their mind cannot accept it, it just boggles at it. As I said, the band we played in was in great demand for shows and concert work and it come Kilnsey show.
Which band was that?
R- Barnoldswick Prize Band.
That's it yes. Just to keep it straight.
R - Well it came to Kilnsey Show you know, it’s quite a big do up in the Dales and we got the job of playing. You didn’t play all day, you played for so long and then you had a ten. Take ten minutes break and play again. Well when you had ten minutes break you had a walk round and a run out and a bun or sommat. Anyway there's a chap there with a little van and outside the back of the van he’s got a trestle table, long boards on trestles and at the back of the van he's got a loud speaker, the first one I ever saw. Course I'm happen over running the story, I'm going back now from what I've told you previously.
Yes. What year was this?
R- It would be round about 1934/35. Would it hell, it ud be before. I weren't married, it ud be before 1926/7. 1927 round about. Anyway he had this loud speaker blaring away and of course naturally it was a new mystery and a miracle and he got a crowd of the local yokels. One would care to call them in that day, farm hands and what have you, and when he’d got a nice crowd round him, he switched the loud speaker off and for tuppence a time you could listen in with earphones round this table. Now could you picture anybody today being so naive as to pay tuppence to listen to an unspecified programme regardless of what the subject matter was whether it were talking or music or whatever. Paying tuppence to have the earphones on for the pleasure of listening for a few minutes. Now I've told people this many times and this generation, I don't suppose your children would visualise it being possible.
Well you'd never think of it would you. I've heard me mother talk about going to dances where they all had earphones on. They were strung down from wires in the ceiling.
R- I’ve never heard of owt like that..
(35 mins)
Yes. I've heard me mother talk about that. That ud be in Ashton-under-Lyne, Dukinfield, Manchester you know, and she says she can remember going to dances where everybody had earphones on, and she said you had to be very careful which way you danced. You had to keep your eye on which way your wires were going.
R- At one side like that.
And they had the wires strung across and the earphones, they could have been on sliders on 'em or something like that.
R- Aye I were going to say that would be the problem.
But she said she’d been to dances where they danced to music over the earphones.
R- Oh well, that's a new one on me.
Yes and you can just imagine that can't you because there were no Susie cables then, no coil up wires. It ud be flex draped all over the place. I bet it were like a bloody spider's web.
R- Aye I can see 'em finishing up like the maypole! [Both laugh]
Yes, anyway, all very interesting, all very interesting. Now there's one thing I’d like to get straight. We're coming towards the end of this tape and there's one thing I'd like to get on it. You'll realise I’m doing a lot of work with people who were born in this town at the time you were born and when they left school there was only one job for them and that was weaving.
R- True enough, weaving yes.
(650)
But you see as usual, Entwistle being a man of quality not only managed to escape weaving at first, he finally manages to escape altogether. So you started off as..
R- A sheet metal worker. Tinsmith and coppersmith it was in those days.
Now where did you serve your apprenticeship? I realise you didn’t finish but where did you go to serve your apprenticeship.
R- Didn't finish. Well, at the bottom of Manchester Road here, which is now the Boutique Box, there's a yard at the back and across the yard is a little, well I wouldn't call it a house but it's one room down and one room upstairs and that was the workshop.
Now which yard is that?
R- Well it’s near the Commercial isn't it? Is it the Commercial or Cross Keys?
Seven Stars.
R - Seven Stars.
Was that the Seven Stars yard?
R - No it was a separate yard from the Seven Stars yard.
Aye.
R- When you go down again if you just look you’ll see that it is a separate entity to the Seven Stars.
Aye.
R - And of course there was the usual cellar underneath the shop. Well all the tinsmithing was done across the road. Household utensils, something you don’t hear or see of today, were what we called ladling cans. If you can visualise a large pint pot, only it would hold half a gallon, with a handle on. Which was used for getting hot water out of your set boiler to put into your dolly tub.
That's it.
R - They called them ladling cans, we made a lot of those.
I've heard 'em called lading tins, have I?
R- Well lading tins, ladling cans, same thing.
Yes.
R - Just to get water out of one into the other. Of course naturally being a textile place there was a lot of work making weft tins, feather oilers and such.
Yes.
R- Wage tins, oil drippers which were put under the bearings at some of the factories, you know, to stop the grease.
(700)
R- Dropping on to the looms and cloth. Even got so far at one time as they, you know the bottom shaft running in the loom, putting tin guards over them, which were entirely bloody stupid, but nevertheless somebody ordered it and paid. Another job we had the gearing, the bevel gearing on the shafting. It must have been factory regulations at that time, all the gearing had to be boxed in with metal. It was quite a skilful job making these gear cases and of course there were little trap doors in at the appointed place for the oiler or greaser to get at the grease cups.
Yes. What was the name of that tinsmiths?
R- Yates Brothers, they were off-comers, they came from Blackburn way.
Aye, that's it. Yates & Thom at Blackburn, Yates Brothers must be a common name over there.
(40 mins)
R- Well of course I did, I started there at twelve years old half time, worked in the morning one week and afternoons another. I started at a wage of ten shillings (10/-) a week, and..
You started at a wage of 10/- a week!
R - I started at a wage of ten shillings a week and I got six pence for me-self off the boss.
That would be in 1920.
R- Yes.
That wasn't a bad wage then.
R- It was a damn good wage then.
How come you started on a wage of ten bob a week as an apprentice?
R - Well, I'm telling you the truth.,
Yes. Oh I don't dispute that Arthur but it seems amazing that.
(750)
R- It was a damn good wage. Of course bear in mind the wages in the factory were on an average £2 if you were a weaver to 50/- (fifty bob). You know, if you were a good weaver. I’ve known weavers coming out with thirty five bob. But unfortunately the little firm that I was with, the older brother who was the senior partner, he was an inveterate gambler and I’ve seen him do jobs for say the local painter or somebody. Somebody would bring a job in who had got to know he was a marvellous billiard player and he started spending a lot of time in the pub playing billiards for the club. And a chap would come in and have a job done, might be a couple of quid. Chap ud say “Go on I’ll toss thee double or quits.” He tossed him and he’d finish up with doing the bloody job for nothing. Well of course if was inevitable he ran to ruin, firm banked, and it was a pity because Willy Yates was a good worker. The other brother, Tom Yates, who came from Kelbrook, he was a very good worker and his wife was a marvellous woman. She was Scots you know. Because every afternoon she used to bring us a cup of tea and cakes up, you know, into the workshop. I think I owe the fact of getting the job there 'cause as I said, my dad at that time had this shop at the top of Wapping and he got to know Tom Yates somehow or another and I was making a steam engine at that time and I were wanting some brass for the
(800)
casing for the boiler and I know I went down to Tom Yates one evening. and brass, even in those days, was a scarce and costly commodity. And 1 got this brass off him and he said “Well 1 shall want to see that boiler when tha’s made it lad!” Of course I went and took it up. 'Cause I had me own lathe at eleven years old and I can’t remember when I learnt to solder. You know, with me father being what he was. In other words I was brought up in an atmosphere of, well what can you call it, elementary engineering or mechanics today.
Yes. So they went bank. What happened then?
R- Well they went bank. Now there was a fella lived on The Nook who had been..
On where?
R - The Nook. Well there's a little street on the top of Jepp Hill that leads you eventually into Rainhall Road. [King Street] Well that first little bit opposite the British Legion Club was called the Nook. There were some very old cottages there.
Right.
R- So, there was a chap lived there, I forget his name, who, I don't know whether he’d been a tinsmith himself, or whether his father had been a tinsmith. But somehow or other the old man got to know that he’d got a folding machine, one or two swaging rollers, ratchet stake and tinman’s Jinny (jenny, engine) and dad had the glorious idea of me starting
(850)
up as a tinsmith. Well of course at that juvenile age I'd no business potentialities and the old man didn't go out [looking for tinsmith work] He might have put the odd bottom in buckets and done repairs but let's put it this way, it wasn't enough to give me a living. So eventually mother turned round she says “Well, tha’ll have to come in and learn to weave and you'll always have a trade in thee hands then.”
R - Well unfortunately, [laughs] I did have to go and learn to weave.
(45 mins)
But at the same time I was playing with Roy Bolton's dance band and coming home sometimes at three o'clock in a morning. And when I got two looms, to keep meself awake and the looms were running, I had a stool between the looms and I used to sit so that the beam were just catching me in the small of the back. So that if I fell asleep, you understand what I mean.
Yes.
R - I were losing a hell of a lot of sleep for a young fella.
Where were you weaving at?
R- Where did I learn to weave? That was down in the Wellhouse Mill.
Which firm?
R - Oh now then, you're asking me, I can't remember the name of the firm.
It's reight, you’re reight. What were your impressions going into the mill to weave after doing tinsmithing?
R - Well shall I say I could never concentrate because of having been used to the percussion sound of drums with an orchestra. The rattle and bang of the shuttles and the machinery, silly as it night sound. used to play bloody tunes in my head and I’d be lost, I’d be away. Hypnotised if you will.
Arthur you've just said the same thing that Ernie Roberts said about weaving. He said “Do you know, you could go into a trance.” He said you could hear tunes in the sound of the shafting and looms.
R- Well that's my experience.
Well there you are, borne out by..
R- Substantiated evidence.
Substantiated by Signalman Roberts. There you are.
R - Well I might tell you I got out of the mill as soon as I could. But, oh may I just mention one very peculiar thing that happened to me at Wellhouse mill, and people could say I was suffering from an hallucination. Because I’d two looms there and me mother had four looms.
Good God, this isn't going to be one of your bloody ghosts is it? [Arthur believed in ghosts and was noted for his stories about them.]
R - Pardon?
This isn't going to be one of your bloody ghosts is it?
R- Yes definitely.
Go ahead Arthur.
R- It’s as true as I stand here Stanley.
You’re sat down!
R - I turned away from me mother’s alley and I knew the shuttle, the cop were running out on my loom. I turns round, ‘cause you can see when it comes to an end. I’m like half way in between the end of my loom and me mother’s, and a shuttle come in the box here, you can see. Well I turned round, put me hand on the knocker off and there was a human arm, male arm, this arm, hairy as a bloody gorilla [laughter] grasping that knob that I was going to get hold of. And as soon as I saw it, it went. Now then it were too quick to have been an illusion, if I'd have been stood there watching that bloody knob and I’d seen a hand appear and gradually disappear I’d have said I'd had an hallucination or my imagination had been playing tricks. But never-the-less there it is for what it’s worth.
[I had every intention of doing more tapes with Arthur because he was a good example of a man who had left the area in the late 1930s to look for better work. He went to Coventry and set on for the Rover Company as a tool room man, the highest machining skill in the factory, and stayed there all his life. His forte was high precision surface grinding and his lung cancer was a consequence of being exposed to very fine grinding dust for years. Arthur went back to Coventry and died, I never saw him again. He was a good man.]
SCG/09 May 2003
7,281 words.
In May 2005, after I published Arthur’s life story as a set of 16 articles in the Barnoldswick and Earby Times I received further information from Arthur Entwistle Junior, his son. If you remember, Arthur was very ill when I did the interviews with him and not all the facts went down on tape, I had to rely on my memory. One thing that has become clear is that Arthur’s dad was called Tom, short for Thomas I suppose. Here’s what young Arthur wrote:
‘Arthur Entwistle left Barnoldswick in 1938 because of the treatment he received from Briggs and Duxbury's where he suffered an accident when acid was splashed into his eyes. Shortly after, someone from B & D called to the house. All they wanted to know was, 'how soon he could return to work'. Arthur decided to follow his brother in law’s advice, (George Handley) about moving to Coventry. He never worked for the Rover Company. His first job was with British Pressed Panels. He then moved to Armstrong Siddeley. (This is where his father, Tom Entwistle, was later awarded the B.E.M. for his help in disabling an unexploded bomb). Arthur then went to The Maudslay Motor Company. When the war started, Arthur was one of the first to volunteer for military service. The company directors put an 'essential works order’ on him as he was too valuable to let go. He was there until the war ended when he went to the Massey Ferguson works in Coventry where he worked in the tool room as an optical grinder. Ill health forced him to leave, just before his retirement date. Arthur's sister, Evelyn married Harold Smith who later lost his life when the "Hermes" was sunk, Cyril, Arthur's brother was awarded the D.F.M. for his part in saving a Lancaster bomber and crew when returning from a bombing raid. The Lancaster made an emergency landing in an American air base, and for a time, the crew were treated as prisoners.’ [evidence of his son Arthur in May 2005]
