TAPE 79/SD/01
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON AUGUST 14TH 1979 AT 26 HARGREAVES DRIVE, RAWTENSTALL. THE INFORMANT IS JIM RILEY, MULE SPINNER AT SPRING VALE MILL. THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Jim Riley in the wheelgate at Spring Vale.
Now then Jim, how old are you?
R- Forty eight.
So you were born in 1930 ... 1931?
R – August 1931.
Now, where were you born?
R- Loveclough.
Loveclough. That’s just up the road here, between here and Burnley.
R- Just that village between Burnley and here.
What was the street, what were the name of the street?
R- Broad Ing Terrace.
What were the name of it?
R- Broad Ing Terrace.
How do you spell that Jim?
R- Broading, B r o a d i n g. Broading Terrace.
Aye. Broading Terrace. That’s it aye. And how many years did you live in that house?
R- About four, four or five years.
And where did you move to then?
R- Just further up the road, on what they call Burnley Road, the next row.
Yes. What were the reasons for that move? Do you know?
R- Well, when we lived at Broading, we lived in what they had cellars underneath you see. Well, they were going to shut them down you see so they moved them out, and we moved farther up, on Burnley Road.
So they were going to demolish them?.
(50)
R- No, they were going to close the cellars down. They are still there actually, oh aye, those cellars.
Yes. And were you living in a cellar?
R- yes we were. We were born under them cellars you know.
So you were living in part of a house then were you?
R- Yes. Houses on top and these cellars were underneath, you see. And I were born under there. And then they come to close them down so then we moved up on to the row further up.
Yes. Tell me Jim, was that like these houses in Hebden Bridge, was it like one house on top of the other, and you went into one from the top of the hill side, and went into the other from the bottom?
Castle View in Barnoldswick. These are similar houses to the ones Jim describes, a two storey house accessed from the street at a higher level than the two-roomed cellar dwellings below.
R- That's right, yes.
And they decided they were substandard, did they?
R- Yes, so they moved us, we moved out.
And they were going to move you out? Well, how…
R- I were only small then, you know. I were only little, right little like.
(100)
Yes that’s it. So you moved out of them when you were. How long were you living in the other house on Burnley Road?
R - Oh ... nearly all the time I lived up there.
Which would be how long, Jim?
R - Well up to moving down here in 1966. I lived at that row all the time then.
Right, that's a good do. Right, well the questions that I'll ask you, I'll be asking you a lot of questions about the house then that you lived in when you were young. And I'll be talking about the house on Burnley Road. But before I do, tell me what you know about the houses on Broading Terrace, you know, the ones that were the cellar houses, what can you remember about them?
(100)
R- Not a right lot, n. ‘Cause I were only a little un you know…
No. That's it, yes. Now what do you know about them, because you'd see them again afterwards?
R- Well, you see, when I got married to the wife we went living in a house over the top of them cellars where I were born you see? And the house that we lived in up over the over the top, it were our underneath you see, and there’s the house. as I were born in. And there were only two rooms in it. Just a living room and a back room For, it were a bedroom.
And the back room couldn't have any windows.
R - No. A bit of a grating.
That*s it, a grate that came up from the front of ...
R- On to the front of the landing, on to the front of the landing.
That's it, just the same as those at Hebden Bridge. Yes, that's it aye.
R- Just the same, yes. And they were very, very dark. And at the front door, what were the front door, were a big, high wall you know, and there were just one window and it were very dark. And they had gas in you know.
(5 min)
So moving up to Burnley Road, it'd be a big improvement for you.
R- Oh yes. Yes well there were electric in.
Yes, well, I'll be asking you some questions about houses, like. I'll ask you about Burnley Road. Now then have you any idea where your father was born.
R- Eh I don’t.
No. What was your father's name. Jim?
R- William Riley.
William Riley. Where was your mother born.
R- She was born in Padiham, me mother.
In Padiham yes, what was her name.
R- but she isn’t living now, me mother.
Yes. What was…
R- She were called Cook, Bertha Cook she were called before she were married.
Bertha Cook yes. And how many brothers and sisters did you have?
R - I had one sister. She died in 1960. 71. (Mother I think] Our Marion, she died of fits, she had epileptic fits. And I have a brother 18 months younger than me, he’s living now. He is living with me father.
(150)
Yes. Were they the only children that was, that were born? What I'm getting at, did your mother just have three confinements and she had three children?
R - No she lost two.
She lost two. Yes.
R- She lost two yes.
At birth?
R - Yes.
Have you any idea what that were with, Jim?
R- I've no idea.
No. That was very common of course wasn't it? And where did you come in the family?
R- Third. She lost two and then .. oh no, sorry, I come fourth, she lost two then our Marion were born and then me and then our Jack.
Yes, that's it aye. Can you remember what your father, do you know what your father’s job was.
R - Yes, he worked at C.P.A. Calico Printers Association, at C.P.A. that's down at the bottom of the hill.
Yes, at Loveclough here, yes.
The dye works at Loveclough in 1979. The new building going up in the foreground is the working men's club Jim talks about.
R- He was .. he worked in the colour shop, he were a colour mixer, mixing colour. He had a good job there yes.
Mixing colour .. aye, it's a responsible job that. Skilled job and all.
R- Yes, he did, he did it for years. Yes
And what did your mother do? Did she work at a1l?
R- She didn't work didn't me mother no. Not when, all the time I were about.
Have any idea if she had worked before she was married?
R - I think she were a weaver before she were married.
Yes. And that’d be at Padiham?
R - Padiham, yes.
Have you any idea how your mother came to meet your father? Did you ever hear her say anything?
R- No.
Can you remember any relatives living with you when you were a child?
R- No.
Any lodgers?
R- No.
How old, was your dad when he died?
R- How old was me dad when?
He died.
R- Me dad’s still living.
Oh is your father still living? Sorry Jim.
R- yes, I said me mother died but my father’s still living.
(200)
He’ll be a fair age then.
R- He’s 76.
Seventy six. Aye.
R- He is living with me brother
Yes, that’s it.
R- But he is not married, so he's living with me dad yes.
And how old was your mother when she died.
R – Fifty eight.
Did any of the family leave the area when they grew up, or did they all stay in the area?
R - No, they all stayed in the area.
All stayed in the area. Aye. Now, well we'll talk a bit about the house Jim. And now we are talking about that house in Burnley Road ...
R - Burnley Road, yes.
Because obviously a four year old, he won't be able to remember much about the other.
R – No, I didn't remember a right lot of that one now.
How many bedrooms did that house have?
R- Two.
And what other rooms were there?
R- Well, there were two bedrooms, a living room, a front room, and a little kitchen.
Now, what sort of furniture, can you remember any of the furniture at all, in any of the rooms?
R- Just, like, a three piece suite, there were one of the old fashioned big wardrobes, with a big mirror in.
Aye, in the bedroom?
R- Which were, which were common them days you know? And a dining room suite and that's all, more or less.
What did you use the front room for?
R- For guests really, you know. For people what visited.
High days and holidays?
R- Yes.
Aye. You'd be in trouble if you went in there during the week wouldn’t you?
R - Oh yes. That were kept clean were that so you hadn’t to go in there.
Yes. I thought it happened so. Aye. Which room did you have your meals in, Jim?
R- We had them in the kitchen, in the house.
Yes. That's, when you say in the kitchen, that's not in the little kitchen, that’s in the living room is it? Or do you mean in the kitchen?
R- Well in the kitchen just weren't big enough for us all to sit in so we probably had them in the living roomy you know? Yes.
Yes, that's it. Aye. And where did your mother do the cooking? In the little room at the back?
R – Yes in the kitchen yes.
(10 min)(250)
Yes that's it. Where did she do the washing?
R- In the cellar underneath. They had a stair, they had cellars underneath.
Aye. And did it have a bathroom?
R- No. They had the old tin bath
Hung outside the door?
R - That were in the cellar were the big tin bath, and we used to fetch it up and put it in front of the fire and fill it up you know with the hot water.
Aye. When were that Jim? When did you get a bath?
R- Once or twice a week . Well, used to be Friday more or less. You know, a big day.
That’s it. Everybody had a bath on Friday I think, everybody I've recorded except one, used to have a bath on Friday. Was it an inside lavatory?
R- No, outside.
It was outside. Was it flushed, tippler, or dry?
R- Tippler.
Tippler. Yes. Did you have piped water in the house?
R- Yes.
Did you have hot and cold, or just cold?
R- No, just cold.
Just cold. What did you do for hot water?
R- We used to boil pans, and the kettle.
Did your mother ever have a side boiler?
R- Yes. One of them big boilers you know. She used to boil it up with the gas pipe. We used to have a big boiler, with a pipe from, what led to the gas.
Aye. One of them Burcos with the gas underneath, galvanised round thing with three legs.
R- Yes. She used to have one of them yes.
On four legs? Four legs they had.
R- Aye, big uns they were.
And she’d use that for, like, warming the water for a bath?
R – Yes. And boiling all her clothes up and all.
That's it, aye. So there'd be no water upstairs, just downstairs.
R- No, just downstairs.
And in the cellar, were there?
R- In the cellar, yes.
Now did your mother warm the water for the washing? Was that warmed in the gas boiler and all?
R- She used to warm it, what do you mean? For washing up?
For.. No, for washing clothes.
R- Oh for washing, she used to use that boiler, yes.
Yes. Did you have a stairs carpet?
R- No. Stair mats, she used to put little mats. Square mats were put up the stairs.
Were they wooden or stone?
R - They were stone.
Stone. Aye. Stone steps.
(300)
R= Yes.
Were the neighbours the same? You know?
R- Yes. The majority had them, they were the same, just odd uns would have some carpet you know. What were a bit better off than we were.
That's it. What kind of curtains did you have? Blinds, curtains, what did you have?
R - Well we had curtains up yes. But when the war were on we used to have black out blinds. The black uns what we used to put up you know?
That's it. Yes.
R - But we did have curtains, you know?
Yes, black out. Can you remember any families in the street not having curtains?
R- No.
No. Did they used to donkeystone the door steps in the street?
R - Oh yes, door steps and window bottoms yes.
Aye. How about the kerb edge?
R -- Yes.
Kerb edge and all? And round t' coal hole.
R – Just odd uns used to do the kerb edge, but not everybody.
Aye. There were nobody black leaded tram lines were there?
R- No. We used to blacklead the fireplace.
Aye, that's it aye.
R- We had a big fireplace with the big door on and me mother used to
blacklead that and all, aye.
That's it. Aye. Like she'd bake in there, wouldn't she? Aye.
R- She baked in the oven. Yes, we used to shove coal, fire under the oven aye.
That's it, under the oven. Did you have one of them porcelain enamel trays in the hearth that looked like tiles? Or was it a stone hearth?
R- It were a stone hearth. Yes.
Aye. If you remember they got round later to having them porcelain enamel things in the hearth didn't they, that looked like white tiles.
R- Yes, that's right, yes they did.
Was there a big fender?
R- Yes there was.
Aye. How was the house lit Jim?
R – Well, that was lit by electricity when we, like when we moved. But I think there were gas in there. I don't think we used to, their were gas in upstairs, come out of the walls in the bedrooms you know? But we didn't use gas.
Yes. So that were the first time your family had electric light, when they moved into Burnley Road.
R- Yes.
Before that, they were on gas. Aye. How did you get rid of the household rubbish?
(350)(15 min)
R- Oh we used to throw it, put it in the dustbin or burn a lot of it you know? Or take it to the tip. take it to the tip in a wheelbarrow, in a truck.
Was it a dust bin or was it an ash pit?
R - We had, we had a dust bin, but there were ash pits outside as well. you know?
Yes. Were they still using ash pits'?
R- Oh yes. Anyway you can burn a lot of stuff in your ash pits as well, you know. And they were across the road were us ash middens, we’d to walk across the road to tip them in you know. There were some out t'back but ours were across the road.
Yes. How often did they clean them out Jim?
R - Once a week.
Once a week? Ash middens and all?
R - Yes. And us toilets, some were across the road. You'd to go up two steps and to the toilet across t’road and all.
Yes, so some of them would have been dry toilets would they?
R- Yes they were.
Aye, were they still coming round to empty them? Buckets?
R- Used to come in, yes with, with a tin in the back, yes.
Aye and powder? Sprinkle powder in aye. How often did your mother do the washing?
R- Well she used to wash a lot did me mother, when we were young you know. A few times a week but she really had a good wash on Saturday, a really good washing day were Saturday, you know.
Saturday. Aye, now that's, that's an uncommon day really for washing in't it? You know it used to be Monday. How long did it take her to, when she did a big wash how long did it take her?
R- Oh a couple of hours with all the washing she had to do. Yes, it took her a fair bit.
How did she dry it?
R- Well either hang them outside, or on the old clothes line in the front room you know.
Clothes rack that you pulled up on pulleys?
R- Clothes rack what you pulled up on pulleys, yes,
Yes. How did she iron? What sort of iron did she have?
R- She had one of them gas irons, what you, you lit inside.
Aye that's it, aye with a gas pipe to it, aye.
R- With a gas pipe aye. Yes.
What can you remember most clearly about washing day?
R- I don't know, all the clothes hanging from off the clothes lines and having to bob down and walk up and down with ‘em all dripping and what have you. That's most as I can remember like.
Had she a big mangle?
R - Oh yes, one of them. She’d take us two lads to move it.
Who twined that?
R- Well, me dad used to do a lot of that for her, yes, mangle for her. It were right heavy were that mangle, it were right biggun. And we used to get two hands on to it, it took me all me time to move it round, it were a big thing. Aye.
Yes. How did your mother clean the house? When she set to, to clean the house up, how did she do it exactly! You know, what did she use to do it?
R- What, in what way do you mean?
Well I mean, nowadays there's all these spray things that you put on furniture and God knows what but in those days there weren’t so ...
R- Oh aye. Oh yes well she probably did like they do today. She'd ...well, we had coconut matting down you see, that were very dusty and she started, she used to have to clean that first, then the dust settled and then she'd start, she’d then go round with the duster you see then. And then polish.
Yes. How did she clean the matting.
R- Well, she used to brush it. But sometimes she used to take it outside and beat it, you know how it were. Oh terrible dusty.
Yes. That's it. Aye.
R- And then, when she'd took it outside I used to help and sweep up for her you know, sweep all the dust and what have you because it left a lot of dust did coconut matting. {Because of the open weave and the hard texture.]
Did you do a fair number of jobs round the house?
R- I did a lot of jobs round the house, I used to help me mother a lot. Mop and all, and do all sorts aye.
Yes. Was there anything when she was cleaning up, that she used to take particular care of? You know, that she used to really think something about?
R- Well. She used to do her own ornaments and that, she wouldn't let us go and do all the glassware and things like that. She used to do them all herself then, so as you wouldn’t break them you know? Them were the special things for her.
What were them, like wedding presents and family heirlooms and what not?
R- Yes, and brass things.
Did the older children help the younger ones? You know, with dressing and eating, or anything like that or did your mother used to look after the children?
R- My mother used to look after the children,.
Did your father do any work round the house?
(450)(20 min)
R- Not a right lot, no.
If he did anything round the house what would he be likely to do?
R- Well he did like all the odd jobs you know, like what wanted doing. Like do it yourself things in the house you know, what wanted mending, anything. But he wouldn’t do housework, like mopping up and things like that. But he, anything what broke or anything, he’d mend it you know and things like that.
Aye. That house in Burnley Road, did the family own it?
R- No.
So they rented it did they?
R- Oh it were rented yes.
Have you any idea how much rent they paid?
R- I think it were five shilling a week.
Who were the landlord?
R- Do you know I don't know who the landlord were in that house.
Did you ever hear your parents talking about the landlord? Whether he were a good landlord or a bad one or what?
R- I think the landlord what owned them houses, I think she lived at Blackpool. I think she were called Miss Bailey and she lived at Blackpool but they never did a right lot to their houses. She were a poor landlady. Yes.
Yes. Did you ever see her?
R- No.
Who collected the rent?
R- They had a rent collector what collected the rent but we never see Miss Bailey who owned them no.
Did your mother ever do any work in the house to earn a bit of extra money you know, like washing or sewing?
R- She used to baby-sit a lot. Look after children for other people what went to work.
Aye, she child minded. That’s it.
R- She did a lot of that. Yes, she did a lot of that.
How much did she charge 'em, can you remember?
R- Do you know I don't know, about ten shilling or five shillings, I don’t know exactly. Somewhere about that. She used to have, sometimes she used to have two in the house, you know that she looked after.
Yes. And she'd look after them children while the mother were at work. That’s it.
R- All day yes.
And did anybody else in the neighbourhood do anything like that?
R- I think they nearly all looked after children round that area you know.
Aye, the women who were at home?
R- Yes. But a lot went to work you know.
Is that house in Burnley Road still standing?
R- No, it's been pulled down now.
Aye that’s been pulled down and the other one that…
R - That what?
The cellar house, is it still up.
R - Yes, Broad Ing’s still up yes. But that what we lived in, what I were telling you about, now there was a Club, Working Men’s Club in Middle Row and it's still there now.
(500)
And they’ve, there's a house at either side to keep it safe like and they're building a new club round there, over the back in the meadow at the back.
Aye, that's where them right big stones are in the wall, in the chimney breast.
R - Yes, well that’s what we are talking about now, we are members.
Which house was yours? Right from t'club?
R- Eleven … twelve it was. It were the third from the club.
This way?
R- Going towards Burnley.
Oh, the other side then. So like it’d be the second one from the end that’s been knocked down now. Aye.
R- One, two, three, yes, second from the club.
Now then, your mother cooking. She cooked on the range? You’ve already told me haven’t you.
R- Yes, gas aye.
Can you remember .. what, she had a gas stove did she? Yes. When did she first have a gas stove, can you remember?
R- Eh, I don't know.
Aye. Do you know if she had one at the other house?
R- No I can't remember that at all. I know she had one all the time as I know when we lived in the other one at Loveclough.
Yes that's all right Jim. Did she make her own bread?
R- Yes she did, yes she used to…
Aye. How much did she make at one time?
R - I don’t know, about happen a dozen loaves I think. I'm not right sure, sommat like that. She used to bake once a week you know.
Aye so she'd bake a stone of flour then, wouldn't she? [14lbs]
R – Yes. Well, it'd last all week you know.
Aye. Did she bake cakes?
R- Yes I think she did, she did make ...
What sort?
R - I don't know, I’ve no idea what sort of cakes they were. Just ordinary cakes you know, and …
It's right, it's right. Did she make jam?
R- Oh yes, them round things what had jam on top, she used to make them.
Oh aye, them. Did she make jam or marmalade, did she boil ...
R- Oh no. She never made jam or marmalade, no.
Pickles? Home-made wine, beer? Did she make any of her own medicines?
R- No not as I know off.
What did you usually have for breakfast?
R - Jam butties. Yes, we used to have jam butties a lot.
And how about Sunday dinner?
R- Potato pie. She used to make her own potato pies and what they call pea pies. She made them with peas and a crust on. Meat and potato pies.
(550)(25 min)
What would you usually have for your dinners during the week?
R- Oh, she used to buy meat and that at odd times you know. It'd be sometimes a bit of chicken and things like that.
Aye. Did you have any supper before you went to bed?
R- Just some biscuits. That's all. But jam and bread. We were brought up on jam butties. Yes.
Aye. Well, here you are. Did the family have a garden or an allotment?
R- No they didn't have anything didn't them houses.
Did they have any land anywhere about where they could keep a few hens or anything like that?
R- There were that land at the back what they're building the club on now. That were, what do you call it, you could build on there you know, you could put a coit on. There were coits on, hen coits ... [cotes] And people had hens in and a bit of an allotment, but there were some allotments farther down the road what people had.
But you didn't have one.
R- But we didn't have one of them, no we didn't have any allotments.
No. Did you have pudding every day?
R - No. No we didn't.
How much milk do you think the family'd have each day?
R- About four or five pints a day, we used to drink a lot of milk.
Was it delivered once or twice?
R- Twice I think. I think once at morning and after dinner.
Aye. Farm milk were it? Kitted?
R- Yes, it were farm milk.
Yes. What would you use it for mostly?
R- Well, me mother used to make rice puddings a lot with the milk and then we used to drink it and all you know?
Aye. How about butter, did you use butter?
R- Margarine.
Yes. How about dripping?
R- Yes, we used to eat a lot of dripping, get it from the butcher’s.
Aye. That's it.
R- For dripping butties.
How about fruit, what fruit did you eat most often?
R- Well we used to have, we used to eat apples and bananas and things like that. Apples, bananas and oranges.
What vegetables?
R – Cabbage and lettuce.
I’ll just shout some foods out here, different foods out here, and you tell me how often you had them, you know, or if you didn't have them at all. Bananas, you've already mentioned them. Yes. How often about?
R- Oh two or three times a week, bananas.
Rabbit.
R- Once.
Fried food, you know fried stuff?
R- Yes, I know what you mean. Perhaps twice a week.
Fish?
R - Once.
What sort of fish did you have?
R- Fillets it were, not plaice.
Aye. When did you usually have that?
R- I think she got that at Friday I think. I'm not right sure.
Aye, Friday were a fish day, weren't it?
R - Yes I think it were Friday when she got it.
Cheese?
R- Once or twice, cheese, yes twice a week cheese.
Cowheels?
R- Well she used to get cowheel happen once a week but I never eat cowheel, I didn't like it.
Tripe?
R- Oh tripe yes, about three or four times a week tripe, we had tripe.
Trotters?
R- No, I never had trotters, I didn't like them.
Black pudding?
R- No.
Eggs?
R- Oh yes. I used to eat plenty of eggs, nearly every day I eat eggs.
Where did they come from?
R- From the farm. From the farm at the bottom in the, down at the bottom of…
Yes. Tomatoes?
R- About twice a week tomatoes I should think?
How about grapefruit?
R- No, I weren't a lover of grapefruit, none of us liked grapefruits.
Were they about? Can you remember seeing them about?
R- Do you know I can’t. I don’t know whether they were about or not. I can’t remember grapefruit. Of all the fruits, like oranges and things like that and grapefruits no.
Aye, it’s funny that. How about sheep’s head?
R- Oh no.
You laugh when I say that. Why? Generally what they buy for the dog isn’t it. There are a lot of people lived on sheep’s head weren’t there. Can you remember having much tinned stuff?
R- A lot of tinned stuff, there were a lot in them days of tinned stuff. There weren't a right lot of fresh things in them days, nearly all in tins you know.
What kind of tinned stuff, anything?
R- Well, what they have today, a lot. Like tins of fruit and what have you there were. And tins of like soup weren’t there, we used to have tins of soup.
Can you ever remember having a bad tin of fruit or food, do you know?
R- Well I can't. No, I don’t know that me mother mentioned it at all.
How about tea? Did you drink a lot of tea?
R- Yes, mostly tea.
Cocoa?
R- We had cocoa. I didn’t care much for cocoa. We used to have it, I used to have Ovaltine. Yes.
(30 min)(650)
Ovaltine, yes. How about coffee?
R- No, I'm I’m not a lover of coffee, although I drink a lot, or quite a bit of it now, but didn’t then.
What did you have for Christmas dinner?
R- I think it were like chicken. I don’t know if we ever had turkey, happen once you know, just an odd time.
What was your favourite food when you were a child, can you remember?
R- Oh I had a steak and kidney pudding.
Is that right?
R- Made in a rag. Eh it were good were that, she used to make a lot of that, it were lovely. That were my favourite, were that. Gorgeous it were.
What did you have to eat if, you know, if it had been a bad week and the family were a bit hard up?
R- What did we have to eat? What, a bit of jam, or a bit of dripping. Jam and dripping on bread.
Did your dad come home for all his meals?
R - Yes he did, dinner and tea. Because he only lived, he only worked at the bottom, you see, at the bottom of the brew, yes. [Brew = dialect for brow or steep road]
Did he always have the same food as the rest of the family or did he sometimes have something different?
R- He had the same as we all had.
Can you ever remember your mother going short of food to feed the rest of you?
R - Oh yes, many a time.
Many a time?
R- Never had a meal sometimes. Just leave her meal for us to eat, to give it to us. Oh yes, a few times..
When things were a bit rough?
R- They were rough, and they were rougher when the war started and all you know when everything were rationed. When rations came in.
Yes. We’ll get on to that Jim. You see that's the reason for these questions. To build a picture up, you know you start to get a picture. Who usually did the shopping?
R- Well, me mother did, or sometimes I used to go up to the shop you know, because the shop were only at the end of the row.
Aye.
R- What they called Noel's shop what's pulled down now.
Noel's?
R- It were called Noel Sutcliffe’s shop. Noel Sutcliffe he were called and it was just at the end of the row you see and we did our shopping there.
Yes. Was all the shopping done there just about?
R- Yes.
Aye. Did she ever go down to Rawtenstall to the market or owt like that?
R- No, not as…
Were trams running on that road then?
R- Do you know I can't remember trams. There were trams, there were tram lines were on, but I don’t know that I can remember trams or not. I don’t know whether they give up running or not when I were a little un. But the tram lines were there but I think there were buses when I can remember, but they've only just given over running.
So you'd never shop at the Co-op?
(700)
R- No.
Did the shop at the end of the row give credit?
R- Yes.
Did your mother have credit?
R - Yes. They had what they called a book you know.
That's it. I were going to ask you that Jim, yes, is that how they worked it, with a shop book?
R- Yes, he used to write it down in the book and then when me father fetched his wage home she used to go and pay.
Go and pay up.
R- Or sometimes if she couldn't afford it she’d to pay so much off it and leave some on for next week. A lot of them did that them days, you know, it were a regular thing. Yes.
Oh yes. A tremendous number Jim, it was very common. Can you ever remember anything about pawnshops, were there any pawnshops about?
R- Not up there at Loveclough, no they were in Rawtenstall were the pawnshops.
Were they patronised do you know, did people used to use them?
R- Oh yes, I believe so, yes.
Well, yes, you say you believe so. Like, have you ever seen anybody taking something there?
R- No, I haven't actually no.
What was the general attitude towards pawnshops? Were they regarded as a good thing or a bad thing.
R- I don't know, some people said they were all right you know. Where they can take stuff to get money for them but me mother didn't agree with them didn’t me mother and a lot didn’t.
(35 min)
If say your mother had seen somebody going down the road with father’s Sunday best suit and the best Sunday frock, to go and pawn them. What would her view have been? Would she have been a bit scathing about it, or would she have thought that it was a good thing that they could go and do that? You know, what would your mother’s attitude have been.
R- Oh, my mother, I don't think my mother would have thought a lot about it you know. She'd have probably thought she's a bit brazen going selling stuff like, you know?
Aye. Yes, a lot of pawnshops used to have a back door that you could go into instead of going in through the front, didn't they?
R - Yes, they probably did.
Is there anything that you can remember eating when you were young that it's no longer possible to get. Can you think of anything?
R - Eh no, I can’t.
How much housekeeping do you think your mother’d have then, any idea?
R- I don't know. About eight pounds or nine? Something like that but I don't know for sure. There weren't a right lot of it you know.
How much do you think your dad was earning?
R- I don't know. I haven't a clue. I never knew what me dad were earning.
No. Now then, the second world war, of courses there were rationing.
(750)
R- Oh yes, rationing books yes.
Now then. Were food short?
R- Yes. It were short.
Can you remember queuing?
R- Yes with ration books, yes I did. I remember queuing.
How about the black market. Did you ever get anything you know, like, from the farm?
R- Me dad used to get different things you know, a bit of butter, a bit of sugar. But like we never knew how he’d got it but he used to bring it home.
That's it, aye. Good lad, good job somebody did.
R- Yes, he looked after us all like that.
[At this distance in time it might surprise readers that I seem to like the idea of the black market. Speaking as one who benefited from it, we had a fairly pragmatic view towards it. Extra rations were very welcome and we knew that people who could afford to eat in restaurants had no problem about supplementing their diet. It seemed to that what was sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander and in a way we were getting one over Hitler and the system.]
Yes. Would you say you were better fed or worse fed during the war than you were before?
R- No, I think we were about the same you know. I don’t think we were really worse off, even though there were rationing. We seemed to get through all right you know, we weren’t short of anything, you know.
Which were the things you missed most with the rationing?
R- I think it were like going to the butcher's and buying meat and that. You were just restricted to so much meat you see at the butchers.
Yes. How were the rabbit job?
R- Happen an odd time a rabbit but .. all the best meat and that, it were out you know.
Yes. Right, clothes Jim. Did your mother make any of the family's clothes?
R- No. She never made any at all.
Did she have a sewing machine?
R- Oh yes. She used to do a lot of sewing like but she never made any clothes.
Did she mend your clothes?
R- Oh yes.
Darn socks?
R- Darn socks and put patches on our pants.
Did she use a mushroom or her fist?
R- Her fist, yes.
Did you ever have any passed on clothes?
R- Yes, a lot of them. We got off all the different people you know. Shoes that were a bit too big for us and things like that.
If you had any clothes bought, where were they bought from?
(40 min)
R- They were bought from a salesman what came round, like a club.
Aye. What were that? Provident?
R- That were… They were a firm from Burnley. Reynard’s they were called, at Burnley, Reynard’s. She used to pay them so much a week for clothes off them..
She’d pay so much a week, yes. What did they call that fellow, had they a name for him?
R- What came round?
Yes.
R- Well you know. I never knew his name. Well I did but I forget you know, I can’t remember.
No. But some people used to talk about, like the Scotchman coming round you know. Provident man or Tally man.
(800)
R- I can’t remember but I can picture him now you know, coming. And we all used to say that Reynard’s is coming you know. And he used to come in then. But we were nearly always out playing, very rare we stopped in, you know?
What happened to your old clothes?
R- I think me mother used to give them away to other people you know, what needed them.
What did you wear for school?
R- Short pants and stockings, boots, or clogs actually. And a little coat, well a little blazer, and a little cap.
Aye. Was there a clogger at Loveclough?
R- Yes there were a clogger in the row.
What was his name?
R- Foster he were called, yes. And he used to make all his own clogs, and then he’d iron us clogs.
What did your father wear for work?
R- He used to have a boiler suit, and he had boots what he had when he were in the Home Guard. He were in the Home Guard and he had boots what he went to work in.
Home Guard boots.
R - Home Guard boots, yes.
Good man. What did your mother wear when she went shopping?
R- Just an ordinary pair of shoes, low flat heeled shoes.
How about clothes? What sort of clothes did she wear?
R- Well, them right long ones, down to her ankles, like flowered, like a skirt. Sometimes she had a frock, a shawl, she used to have a shawl.
Yes, but fairly long skirts.
R- Yes, right down to her ankles yes.
Aye? There’d be plenty going about with them shorter than that then, wouldn't there?
R- Yes. But she did have them shorter ones later on but I remember her having the long ones.
That's interesting aye. Did your dad ever mend your clogs?
R- He used to iron them yes. He used to go and buy irons from the cloggers and he used to iron, clog 'em himself.
How many outfits of clothes did you have at any one time?
R- We just had the clothes what we wore through the week to school, what we used to go to school in and then we had some old ones what we changed into at night when we came home to go and play out and then we had a best for Sunday. Always had a suit for Sunday. We used to always have to keep that [special]
How often did you have clean clothes?
R- Do you mean a change of underclothes?
How often changing clothes yes, that's it.
R- Oh we used to change ‘em every week like. But we didn't wear underpants or anything like that in them days.
That's it yes. When you were first…
R- No vest. No, we had no vest, no underpants.
Were your trousers lined?
(850)
They weren't lined.
R- No.
When's the first time you can remember wearing underpants Jim?
R- When I started work when I were 14. Yes when I started work at first, that's when we started wearing them and a vest, but up then we never wore them.
Good. And your mother was in a savings club, she was in Reynard’s.
R- Yes. She were in Reynard’s aye.
What sort of change did you see in the sort of clothes that were being worn during the war? Like, were clothes that people were wearing, the ones after the second world war as they were before, or did you see any change in the sort of clothes that people wore?
R- Oh there were a change yes. Like same as you said about women with their frocks a bit shorter. I don't know, I think that fellers pants, all the pants and that were all turn-ups. But I don’t know about suits, whether they changed or not, we hadn’t a suit.
How about colours?
R- No, I can’t say I took much notice of them really.
Yes. That’s all right Jim. We’ll end this tape here and put another on, we’re nearly off.
SCG/07 July 2003
7,384 words.
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 79/SD/02
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON AUGUST 14TH 1979 AT 26 HARGREAVES DRIVE, RAWTENSTALL. THE INFORMANT IS JIM RILEY, MULE SPINNER AT SPRING VALE MILL. THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Did everyone sit down for their meals together?
R- Odd times yes, I mean, like we used to have ours when we came home from school.
Aye, and your dad’s would be later?
R- And me dad used to work while half past five, and we used to come home at about quarter to four, four o'clock and we used to have our tea and go out [playing]. And me dad come home at half past five, and then he'd sit down to tea with me mother then you see.
(50)
Did, when you were all sat down together, like say Saturdays or Sundays or holidays, anything like that, did your parents have any rules about how you behaved at the table? Were they strict with you at all?
R- No, not right strict but we, you know, we hadn't to act the goat or anything. We hadn't to do a lot of laughing, we had to get on with us meal and that were it you know.
What were they strict about, you know like times for coming in or swearing or being cheeky or owt like that?
R- Oh they weren't right bothered about times for meals. Like we used to come in when we had been playing out, but we never swore in the house, never. Even today, in front of me own father I never swear at him. No, never have done. We'd one rule we never did, we never swore.
Yes. If you did do something that were wrong how did you get punished?
R- Me dad used to get his belt and he used to belt us with his belt.
Aye. Did that happen often?
R- Yes quite a bit. And it…
When you say quite a bit, you know, how often?
R- Well, I don't mean every day, but twice or three times a week. If we weren't behaving ourselves he used to take his belt off and he’d hit us with the buckle.
With the buckle end?
R- With the buckle end, it were really, it were bad.
Looking back, what do you think about it now? Do you think he was a bit hard an you?
R- Well, no personally I don’t. It were a bit harsh at the time when we were younger but do you know it were a good thing really. It learnt us you know. We suffered a bit like with the buckle end but I think it did us good you know?
Were you the same with your son?
R - No, different altogether with our Ian, our Ian and Sheila.
Yes. Now why? If it were good for you why is it not good for them?
R- I don’t know. It’s a different upbringing today to what it were in them days.
Aye. But you never felt any animosity towards your father because of the fact that he was strict with you?
R – No. I didn’t bear any grudge at all you know.
That's interesting Jim. No grudge?
R – No. None at all.
That's interesting when you think about it and yet you wouldn’t bring your children up that way.
(5 min)
R - No. I've said to ours many a time, “My dad used to hit me with the buckle end of his belt when we did anything wrong and all as what I’m doing to you two is shout at you.” You know or else raise me hand you know. But never hit them you know. But we used to got the belt, oh yes. It hurt aye.
(150)
Lass and all?
R – Oh yes.
What did your mother think about that?
R- Oh she were, she didn't like it you know but he were the boss were me dad, he were the boss in the house. What he said went.
No messing about?
R- No.
A bit more about that later Jim. I think that's interesting. Did anybody ever say grace before meals?
R – No.
Ever have any prayers at home?
R – No.
Going to bed?
R - When we were younger we did yes.
If you had a birthday was it different from any other day? Did you ever get birthday presents?
R- No.
How did you spend Christmas, New Year, you know?
R- Oh we had a good time at Christmas. We used to get, me dad used to do… well, he’d put a big pillow at the bottom of the bed. We’d get apples, oranges and some games, and we had a good time at Christmas.
All right. How about Easter? Was Easter a big holiday?
R- No, not really, we had all Easter holiday at schools, you know but we weren't anything exceptional.
Did you ever have pace eggs, anything like that at Easter?
R- No.
Were there any musical instruments in the house?
(200)
R- We had a piano accordion but nobody could play it.
Aye. How come you had a piano accordion?
R - Do you know I don't know. We found it one day, me and our Jack, when we were rooting upstairs in the long drawers and we pulled it out and at the bottom the piano accordion were in. And we used to be playing it you know, in and out with it and making all sorts of noises but nobody could play it. I don't know how it come to be there.
Aye. That's interesting..
R- And I never knew whose it were.
Did any of you sing?
R- Me dad used to sing. A good singer were me dad.
Where did he sing?
R- He used to sing in the clubs, he used to sing in t'club on the row you know. He were a good singer when he were younger.
Did he sing at home?
R- Yes he did. He used to sing a lot knocking about in the house but he didn't actually sing a song to us.
Yes. What were the name of that club?
R- Loveclough Working Mans Club it was called.
I thought it were, aye. C.I.U?
R- yes, it was a C.I.U. club. [Club and Institutes Union Affiliated.]
Were there any games you played in the house? You know, say it were a bad day.
R- Yes, we used to play a lot of games, snakes and ladders, draughts and things like that.
Did your parents ever play with you?
R- Yes. Well, I’ll tell you what we used to play a lot of, table tennis. We had a little snooker table. We were mad on snooker. Me dad were a good snooker player and he taught us how to play snooker. He had a little table and we used to put it on the big table after tea. Aye, we used to play snooker and billiards.
Was there anybody in the family that couldn't read or write?
(250)
R- No.
Did you have a regular newspaper?
R- Yes.
What was it?
R- Do you know, I don't know what it were called. I don't know what. The Express, were it going then?
Yes it were going.
R- Yes I think it were the Daily Express.
How about magazines, woman's magazines?
R- Me mother had a woman's magazine yes.
Which one, can you remember?
R - Do you know I don't know whether it were the Woman’s Own or not.
Aye. How about, you know, Children’s Newspaper, anything like that or comics?
R- We used to have comics, used to have the Beano and Dandy, and Film Fun and Knock Out. Yes, all of them.
As you got older did you get on to the Wizard and Hotspur?
R- We went on to books then yes and Hotspur and things like that yes.
Aye. They were good weren't they?
R- Ye. Our Ian has a load upstairs of them now. Victors, nearly brand new, he had them since he were a little un and they’re in good condition.
Eh I can remember I used to look forward to the Wizard and…
R – Yes, they were good.
Hotspur.
R - Hotspur, there were Film Fun. Eh…
Do you remember Wilson?
R- Yes.
The man who knew no fear.
R- Yes.
And Rockfist Rogan weren't it?
R- yes. They were good were them.
Eh, Those were the days Jim. I’d better shut up, we are sounding like a couple of old men. Library, was anybody a member of the library?
R – No. Me dad used to do a fair bit of reading, but it were books what he got at work, you know, he borrowed off…
Were there any books in the house?
R – Yea, what me dad had, that's all.
(10 min)(300)
What sort of books would he read?
R- I think he liked detective books did me dad. And we had a Bible, we had a Bible in the house.
Family Bible.
R- Yes.
Were it one of the big uns?
R – No. It were only a little one, a small one.
Who read that?
R- Well we all use to read a bit of it you know at odd times like when we were younger like. And we used to go to read it before we went to school, at Sunday School you know.
Yes, well I’ll be asking you about that. What time did the children go to bed?
R- When we were younger we used to go about six o'clock, half past six.
Aye, winter and summer?
R- Yes. Well, winter six o'clock, summer happen about seven or half past seven, but no later.
How about your mother and father, what time would they go to bed?
R- I think they used to be in bed by about ten o'clock. But me dad used to be in later than that, he went to, he used to go to the Club a lot you know?
Yes. How often did he go to the club?
R- Oh pretty regular.
Every night?
R- No, not every night but nearly every night, just odd nights he stopped in but nearly all t’fellows were club goers then, you know.
Did you have any pets?
R- I didn't but me brother had, be kept rabbits, he had a few rabbits, and we had a budgie, we always had a budgie.
Budgie. Oh aye.
R- Yes. Me dad always had a budgie in the house, we used to have two.
Did your father smoke?
R- Yes.
What, pipe?
R- No, cigarettes.
Did your mother smoke?
R- Yes.
(350)
Fags?
R – Yes.
How about your brothers and sisters?
R- No. None of us smoked.
Aye. You don't smoke now either, do you?
R- I used to do, but I gave over.
Aye. When did you start?
R- When I went into the Army and I were 19.
Did anyone in the family ever have a bet?
R- No. Oh, me dad used to have a bet.
Horses?
R- Yes and football.
And football? That’d be pools?
R- Yes, he did the pools, but he didn't do the big pools, it were local, a local coupon you know?
When can you remember seeing your first radio?
R- Eh! That's one of them half moon shaped things, you know.
Well, you know, wireless, radio, anything like that you know? Did you always have one from when you can remember?
R- I can always remember us having a radio yes. We were never without a radio.
Aye. Were it mains or battery, can you remember?
R- Mains were this one, mains.
Now then, if you were outside the house, where would you usually play?
R- All over, we used to play in the main road a lot because there were very little traffic and we used to put t’coats down in the middle of the road. [for goalposts]
Burnley Road?
R- On the road itself and play football.
It’s hardly credible now is it.
R- Yes. And the playing ground were only 50 yard down the road but we never played on it, we used to play in the middle of the road.
Eh God.
R- But on Sundays we used to go down on the park, there used to be a lot of us then you see playing cricket and football.
Who did you play with?
R- All the lads what were local, me brother and…
Was there anybody that you weren't allowed to play with?
R - No we could, we’d play with anybody.
What games did you play?
R- Cricket, football, that were it.
That were it, nothing else? How about rounders?
R- Well we’d play rounders with the girls, and what they called Tin In the Ring. We used to play that. But football and cricket, nothing else, we were that were mad on them, that were the game for us.
Aye, what sort of a ball?
R- Tennis ball.
For both?
R- For both. And sometimes we used to play with somebody else’s case ball, what were a bit better off than we were. And when it got busted, we used to play with the bladder inside and then if the bladder busted we used to stuff the casing with paper and we used to play with that then.
Aye, that's it. Did you ever go for walks?
R- Yes we did a lot of walking.
Did you ever have a bicycle?
R- Yes. Nearly always had a bike, I were mad on bikes. I were keen on tinkering with them you know. I used to mess about with ‘em and anything wrong with a bike, they used to bring it to me and I used to mend it for them.
Did you do a lot of cycling?
R- I did quite a bit yes and me dad used to do a lot you know.
Oh, did he have a bike and all?
R - He had a bike yes. Dad had a bike, and me and Jack had a bike, yes.
Did you use to go off together?
R- Yes, set off when it were nice in summertime.
I'll ask you some more about that in a minute or two. Did you ever go out collecting, you know, Whinberries or Blackberries or firewood?
R- Just odd times. Firewood yes. Aye for the fire yes many a time. Early on, early on in the mornings.
Aye. Where did you go?
R- Up in t’woods. Sometimes we'd chopped little trees down and then we’d to saw it up into little logs and then chop it up. We used to do that regular for to save the coal, put a bit of wood on with a bit of coal.
(450)
Did anyone in the family ever do any fishing?
R- No.
Did your father go out in his spare time apart from the club?
He were a mad on bowls. He played a lot of bowls. He won a lot of things with bowls, canteens of cutlery and little cups, oh yes.
Aye, he'd have his own woods?
R- He had his own woods yes, still has them today.
Still bowls does he?
Only odd times, not so much now.
That would he Crown Green, wouldn't it?
R – Yes.
And you say he had a bike and all. And where would he go if you and him set off, where would he go?
R- Oh, we used to go round Whalley, Clitheroe, all round there.
Yes. When would that be like, Sunday or a Saturday, or what?
R- That were at Sundays.
What did your mother do in her spare time? That’s if she had any?
R- Go camping, she did a lot of camping. Gossiping, you know, going to…
Neighbours ..yes.
R- Neighbours yes.
Was there anything like, you know, Women's Institute, well not Women's Institute, Mother’s Union…
R- They had a Women’s Institute then but she never joined in with them, but people used to come to me mother, camping and they would to go to the back door of the pub with a jug, fill the jug up with beer, take it back home and have a drink and a natter, you see when nobody were in.
(500)
That's it yes. I shall ask you about that in a bit because that’s interesting. I’ll stick to the order the questions are in so we don’t miss anything. Did your mother and father ever go out together?
R - No, me dad always were out on his own.
Can you ever remember him taking your mother out?
R – No. No I can't, me mother were always at home.
Can you ever remember your mother setting off anywhere by herself and going somewhere, you know, that you'd call, sort of exceptional, like going, getting a train and going…
R – No. I don't think so, no. The farthest she went were just up the road to me dad’s sister’s, that were me auntie Bertha.
(20 min)
Where were that at?
R- That was just where you pass the petrol station coming over the moor at Oak Mill at Dunnockshaw. When you're coming through Dunnockshaw there's a petrol station on your left.
Yes.
R- Well just past there there's some houses on your right hand-side and me auntie used to live there, that were me dad's sister.
Yes, just beside Clow Bridge Drive, yes.
R - Well that’s as far as she went, that were it.
Yes. Did the family go to church regular?
R- No. We used to do when we were younger, me and our Jack and our Marion, we used to go to church.
And Sunday School?
R- Sunday School yes. We used to have to go to Sunday School on Sunday. Yes.
Did you go to church as well as Sunday school?
R- We went to church as well yes because it were a Church of England school you see?
Aye, that’s it. What, church in the morning and Sunday school in the afternoon?
R – Yes.
And how about church at night, did you go again at night?
R - We didn't go at night no.
No. So your mother and father didn’t go but they made sure you went.
R- We went, we always had to go to church yes.
Did your mother ever go to church?
R – Not as far as I can remember. No.
Were there any social events connected with the church that you went to? You know, can you remember anything like trips, anything like that?
R – No, we never went on any.
Did you over go away for a holiday when you were young?
R- Not to stay, just odd days to Blackpool.
You can never remember going away for a week’s holiday?
(550)
R – No, never had a week’s holiday, not when we were younger.
And if you had a day out would there be anywhere else apart from Blackpool where you’d go?
R - No it was just Blackpool.
Always Blackpool.
R - On the sands.
Train?
R- Yes.
There, from Rawtenstall?
R - Yes.
How did you get to Rawtenstall?
R- By bus.
Bus?
R- Yes there were buses round, you know?
Would you all go together if you went for a day at Blackpool?
R- Yes all together.
Did your dad go as well?
R- Yes, all the family went yes.
How often can you remember doing that? Roughly? You know, was it fairly regular or was it…
R- No it weren’t regular. Just the odd time.
Aye. Were there any other sorts of outings or visits, when you were young, apart from cycling with your dad.
R - No. No it were all more or less playing round home, you know?
Were any of the family ever connected with the Temperance Movement?
R- No.
Did anybody ever tell you anything about the evils of drink?
R – No.
Did you ever sign the pledge?
R- No.
Can you ever remember seeing women going into pubs when you were young?
R- No that weren't done weren't that. That’s why they used to always go to the back door of the pub.
That’s what I said I’d be getting round to. If a woman went into a pub on her own, like she couldn't go in the club on her own could she, she wouldn’t be allowed in.
R- She weren't allowed in the Workingman’s Club, no.
But was there a pub in Loveclough as well?
R- Yes, it were the Glory.
Glory, that's it yes, of course there is.
R - You pass it coming here.
What would be the attitude to a woman that went into the bar at the Glory on her own?
R- Oh I don’t know, they'd probably talk, do you know. I don’t know really whether, what they used to think about them like that. It just weren’t the done thing you know in them days.
It was certainly frowned on wasn’t it?
R- yes.
Do you know of any families that wore ruined with drinking? Do you know any families where any of the parents drank far too much?
(600)
R- There were me uncle Joe, he used to drink a lot.
Were that your father's brother or your mother's brother?
R- No, me mother’s brother, and he really did drink excessively you know. He were always drunk. Nearly every night when he went out he used to drink a lot.
Was it a fairly common then Jim to see drunken people about?
R- Yes. Drunken fellows, yes, we used to see them, well rolling out of the pubs and all out of the clubs and they'd stagger out at the front door and right into the main road as soon as they come out of the front door you know. Yes, there were a lot of drunkards in them days. They used to drink a lot did fellows.
Tell me, is it my imagination? I don't seem to see as many drunken people about now as I used to. What do you think?
(25 min)
R- No, I don't think you do. Yes I see quite a few knocking about but I don't think…, I don't know. I've seen a lot of these young lads what’s drunk today, whether they are drunk or whether they put it on or not I don't know but there were a lot of them when I were younger used to be drunk during the day did a lot of fellows you know?
In the local pub and the club were certain rooms kept for certain people, or did anybody booze anywhere?
R- No. There used to be a tap room for the blokes and no women were allowed in it. It were just for the men for to play darts and dominoes and swear you see.
Yes that's it. Tha’rt right. Eh aye, I can remember when I was in a tap room one day and a woman come in. It was like, God, I don't know what it was like, somebody swearing in church. Aye. Can you remember seeing any street performers or people selling stuff who entertained passers by?
(650)
R – No. Not round our way no. No I never seen anything.
No. Can you ever remember people coming round the streets, knife grinders?
R- Oh yes, a rag and bone chap coming. And sharpening your knives and scissors, there used to be a bloke on a pedal bike and he used to lift it up and pull the stand out, and then sit on it and pedal away and sharpen your knives and scissors, oh yes, we used to see them pretty regular.
Aye. There were one in Barlick you know, and I always laugh when I think about knife grinders, they used to call him Flagger, because he couldn't afford a bike and he used to come and knock on the door, get your knives and scissors, take them to grind them and he used to go round the corner and sharpen then on the kerb stone. He’d make a good job, but sharpen then on the kerb stone. We used to call him Flagger but he always did it round the corner, he didn't do it in front of your house.
R- Yes, that's right, yes.
Can you ever remember your dad sharpening the carving knife on the door step?
R- Oh yes, big knife yes. On the door step.
Did you have a stone slopstone?
R- Yes.
Did he ever sharpen it on the front of that?
R- Sometimes he did, yes.
Aye. That’s why a lot of them are worn down at the front you know.
R- Yes, it used to have worn kerb, that’s it.
That's it, that's why a lot of them are worn down at the front with sharpening the carving knife on it. Did you belong to any clubs or societies? You know, before you left school, you know like church choir or Band of Hope or the Scouts or Guides or owt like that?
R- No.
No. Of course you wouldn't be in the Guides would you!
R- No I wouldn't.
They are awful anyway, they wouldn't let you in Jim.
R- I shouldn't think so.
What did you think of Loveclough as a place to live in when you were young? Looking back now you know, what do you think of Loveclough as a place to live in?
R- I thought it were all right, I thought it were a nice place. It were a grand place. There were, like better than living in town because there were, you’d more freedom there were plenty of areas for to play in and for to go walks and play in. You’d to make a lot of your own entertainment in those days because there was nothing for you to go to. But like same as me, the open spaces and the fresh air, and I thought it were all right, I thought it were grand you know.
Yes. Can you ever remember going to a wedding when you were young?
(700)
R- No.
Or a funeral?
R- No. No I can't. We stopped at home I think when there were funerals. My mother and father used to go but we didn’t.
Where did you enjoy going most when you were a child? You know, if somebody had come to you and said “Right, you can go anywhere you want today Jim.” Where would you have gone?
R- To the pictures. I used to like to go to the pictures.
Did you used to go a lot?
R- Once a week.
Yes. Did you have any pocket money?
R- Yes, sixpence a week.
Well, you weren't doing too bad then!
R- No, but with that we used to .. a penny bus fare, well, twopence, a penny down and a penny back, twopence in the pictures and twopence to spend, that were sixpence.
That were the pictures.
R- That were it, aye.
What were the pictures you used to see, can you remember?
R- Hopalong Cassidy and Buck Rogers. Oh yes.
Yes. Flash Gordon?
R- Flash Gordon yes. I used to sit in the twopennies, the first four rows at the front.
(30 min)
That’s it, aye.
R - And get a crick in your neck watching it!
That's it, aye. Flash Gordon, eh, how about that?
R- I used to like that aye. It was grand.
Aye. You and me were going to the pictures at about the same time, I’ll tell you.
R- Eh I used to enjoy it.
I'm just trying to think what t’other were that used to be on. Aye there were the Lone Ranger weren’t there and Hopalong Cassidy
R- Yes, and there were someone else….
And there was one feller, I know I always used to think he was a bit of a bloody puff and I can’t think. It wore a serial, it used to be on each week.
R- Yes it were.
And he were a big soft looking bugger. I can’t remember Jim, I can't this minute…
R- No I can't remember. There is a few and you can’t remember.
Now you've said that your mother's friends used to come camping. Did your father’s friends call at the house often?
R- Yes. They used to come a few times did me dad’s friends.
What would they come for? Just for him to go out or…
R- Just for camping and then a lot of them used to come to have their hair cut, he used to cut hair. And he also mended watches, he were a good watch mender, very good at watch mending.
Aye?
R- Yes he used to mend anybody’s watch, pocket watch, wristlet watch. If you had one, but mostly they were pocket watches, you know, with chains. But he were… And he were also keen on photography, he used to develop his own. He had all the equipment for developing, trays and such. Aye he were pretty keen on that, he had a few hobbies had me dad you know, he were very good at it. And he still cuts his own hair today, he cuts his own hair, with the mirror, big mirror in the back and…
Yes. Aye, it's funny that, I used to work with a fellow that used to do that, aye. [George Bleasdale, engineer at Bancroft.]
A Bancroft picture really but Frank Bleasdale, George's brother who was winding master at Bancroft used to cut hair free in working hours.
R- With the scissors. And he’d never been to a barbers had me dad in his life.
Would friends call in at the house you know, just call in as they were passing or would they sort of need to be invited?
R- No, they used to, if they were walking past the house and they'd just knock on the window. All right Bill? And then they’d come in and have a natter.
Yes. How would you spend Saturday when you were young?
R- Get up in the morning, go playing football, and then look forward to going to the pictures this afternoon. That were like a ritual more or less. Saturday afternoon pictures.
How about Saturday evening?
R- Oh Saturday evening, football and cricket again. And in summertime if we’d been to a cricket match at Saturday afternoon, which we used to go to then, we’d get the wickets and bat out at night, and play cricket and that until we got shouted of to come in.
Did you ever go to any concerts or theatres or music halls or owt like that?
R- No.
Just the pictures.
R- Not when we were young, later on in life we used to go to…
Later on. Yes well, there you are, what I’m talking about now really is before you left school.
R- No we didn't go to any, then.
And then, you know I’ll ask you [in] a bit about school but ... I'll have a quick glance at a bit of politics now. Can you remember anybody in the family ever discussing politics?
R- Never, no.
Do you know what views your father held?
R- Well, he were Labour were me dad, he always had been Labour. They never discussed politics, but I know he were a Labour man.
Yes. You've no idea why he was a socialist, do you know?
(800)
R- No I haven’t, I have no idea no.
How about your mother?
R- Well, I don’t know, not to my knowledge she hadn’t and she never used to discuss it.
Can you ever remember her voting?
R- No. I can’t.
Can you remember your dad voting?
R- I think he did use to vote yes, but I don’t know, not really. I think he did vote you know but I can’t remember.
Was either your mother or your father a member of a political party, you know, were they actually members?
R- No.
Can you remember anything about elections when you were younger? You know, were they big things elections or were they…
R- I can’t remember, no.
No. Have you ever heard your father say anything about women? About women having the vote or women’s role in life? Anything like that?
R- No.
What would you say was your father’s views about women? You know when you think of it, this isn’t meant in the spirit of criticism, it's a way that a lot of men used to think in those days and it sounds to me as if your father was one of them. I mean him and your mother never went out together, and your father would think that doing housework was, you know, it was below him really to do housework wasn't it? I mean like mending something that was broke were a different thing altogether. Now these are all fairly common views. Would you say that your father had a, you know, in some ways really quite a low opinion of your mother. Can you understand what I mean?
R- Yes I can understand what you mean .. but I don't know ... He always said to us like “She is to stop at home and do the housework and look after the children” and that were it you know. That’s what she were there for more or less.
Ye, that’s it. A bit like the Andy Capp thing isn’t it, “A woman’s place in the home is in bed unless there’s coal needs fetching in.”
R- Yes. In the home .. that's reight yes. Well that were his view I think.
Aye. And what are your views on that Jim?
R- What, for today? Now?
Yes.
R- Well I don’t agree with that way at all. Probably because I used to help me mother a lot when I were younger. I think times were pretty hard for me mother. And I think he could have given her a bit more help, like same as she had to fetch coal and things like that.
That’s something I wanted to ask you, what sort of a life do you think your mother had.
R- I think she'd a damned hard life personally. It were hard work bringing us up. And me dad used to go out, have his tea and go out and leave me mother to it you see? And she had to sort everything out, and meals .. which women do today. I know some women what do today, they have it all to do some women today, their husbands go out but I don't agree with that. I think if you are married to a woman, I think you should be fifty fifty, you should pull both ways. And that's how, that's .. you know, that makes your marriage. Everybody hasn't the same view, you see but…
But yet, do you think that nowadays, under the sort of freedom that we have nowadays, I don't know, but I've often thought that if women were treated like they were say in the twenties and thirties, I think they'd just up and leave home. But in those days they never, they just never did it. Really, your father, well not just your father, but would you say that it was true that men in those days they really had, they'd got the clean end of the stick hadn’t they?
R- Oh yes. Everything were going right for 'em. They had the best end of the stick. And all as they did were work and fetch the wage home and go out and have a good time in the pub and come home and that were it you know, and have a good time, and t’mother were at home….
Now would you say that he had that attitude because .. would you say it was because he was naturally a hard rotten bugger, or would you say it was because that was the way he’d been brought up?
R- No. That were the way he'd been brought up. I don't think he were, as some would say, a rotten bugger. That were the done thing them days.
Yes, everybody was the same.
R- Everybody were alike, he didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. The other blokes what went in the club with him did exactly the same thing.
Yes. When you think about it, it’s interesting isn’t it because just about everybody you talk to says the same thing. I think that women must have had a terrible time you know, in those days Jim, honestly. It's one of the things that comes over to me time and time again and when you think of the number of women who were not only doing all the housework but out spinning or weaving all day and then going home and doing all the housework.
R- And then going home…. Aye.
And I mean, from what you've told me, your father wasn't a drunkard.
(900)(40 min))
R- No.
He’d like his drink, and he'd go and have his drink but I mean your mother could have been a lot worse off. She could have had a husband who was actually boozing all the money you know and…
R- Yes. But he looked after us at home, we were, you know, we didn’t go short at home.
Yes that’s it aye.
R- But some did used to go out boozing and take all the money with ‘em and just leave a little bit for the wife to sort out.
Did you know any families round about .. Now we are not talking about being ruined by drink and this that and the other, but did you know, were there people about who were worse off than you?
R- Oh yes. There used to be a family, called Fawcett and they lived up on the hill side in a little cottage, and they really were rough. Now stone floors and all as they lived off were jam and bread, and the lads used to go to school, same school as I went to, and they used to wear women’s high heel shoes, and women's frocks, they'd no pants. Like we had little shorts, little short pants. Nowt like that, no stockings. Really rough. And the mother left them when they were little and the father used to bring them up and he were out drinking all day. He would come home everyday drunk. And sometimes they used to sit outside the pub did the lads waiting for their father coming out of the pub and he’d be drunk when he come, and then they used to take him home. And every time you went in that house that table, they used to have like one of them old-fashioned tables with four legs, the old wooden topped things, and it were full of jam and breadcrumbs and stale bread and dripping and that's all they lived off. They really did rough it. Aye, terrible. That’s why I say we were a lot better off than a lot of people were. Some were better off than we were but I don't think we were poor by any means. But this Fawcett family were poor, and the lads have suffered since. Now they’ve got older they’ve got ulcerated stomachs, they’ve had a rough time as they’ve grown up. I know now, Arthur Fawcett, Billy Fawcett yes they’ve really had a hard time when they've grown up. They’re as old as I am you know and they’ve all had trouble with their stomachs. And that were all caused with their upbringing when they were little. They used to go, no raincoats or little coats to their backs, used to go out in the rain and rainy days like this, saturated, just dripping off their hair and off their nose. Terrible, shocking, I know nowt like it, you couldn't credit it, how, you know, people living like that. And they did.
(950)
Were there, would you say that there were those people that were better off than yourselves, how could you tell they were better off?
R- Well, they were better off. Like same as the clothes what they wore, they were a bit better clothes than what we used to wear.
What sort of jobs would their dads have?
R- Well I don’t know. I don't know what they did. They used to work at C.P.A. and all but I think their fathers were printers, like you know that were a good paid job were printers, and it is today at C.P.A. They’re on top money is the printers. And they had, the younger lads had a bit more pocket money than we had, you know, and their houses were a bit better than what ours were, there were a lot more carpets down in the rooms and …
There wouldn't he a big variation in the houses in Loveclough though would there?
R- No. They were nearly all the same type of house you know?
Yes, because Loveclough really, when you look at it, it's one of your actual factory villages. I mean, nearly all them houses would be put up at the time the mills were being built wouldn't they?
R- Yes, they were all round about the same.
It's not like, did Loveclough have a church?
R- They had a Providence Church. That were, that's up against the boundary there where you come on to the boundary. They didn't have an actual…
Yes but they didn't have an actual Church of England did they? Where did you go to church?
R- Yes, they had a Church of England but it were up on the top round what they call Swinshaw Lane. It were a big church, we used to go there from school, we used to walk it, used to come out of the school and up the path way and on to Swinshaw Lane and than we used to walk it to the church. And then we used to got to it off the main road which to down by the New Inn and we passed through the New Inn and we used to go up there and then into the church and it were just up Swinshaw Lane, that were a Church of England school were that.
When you say Providence what were that?
R- That were a Providence Methodist Church, my wife were, she used to go there. She were a Methodist my wife.
Aye. Methodist aye. Was she a Methodist? Aye.
R - Yes, and we were Church of England..
Oh I'll have to pull her leg about Ranters and Congos and such. That’s what they used to call than in Barlick. The Primitive Methodists were called Ranters.
R - Did they? Is that right?
Aye. Ranters and the Congregationalists were called the Congos.
R - I've never heard that like, I've never heard her mention anything like that.
Oh aye. Ranters and Congos. Reight, I’ll tell you what, that’ll do for tonight Jim.
(992)(45 min)
SCG/08 July 2003
7,175 words.
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 79/SD/03
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON AUGUST 14TH 1979 AT 26 HARGREAVES DRIVE, RAWTENSTALL. THE INFORMANT IS JIM RILEY, MULE SPINNER AT SPRING VALE MILL. THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Right we’ll go on with education a bit now. We’ll just probe into your education a bit Jim.
R- Don't probe right deep.
Now then, what school did you go to?
R- Just a small primary school across the road. Just across the road from where we lived.
What were the name of it?
R - It were called Rows school.
Aye. Was it an endowed school or a board school or what was it. Do you know?
R- No. It just were an endowed school like well ...
With the church?
R- Yes, C of E school, what were run with the church.
Yes. Like did they have a board of governors, and the parson were on it, you know?
R – Yes. The parson were on it, he were on it, from the church.
And he'd come down once a week or so? Aye, that’s it.
R- Yes and they used to give … yes.
How old were you when you first went to school?
(50)
R- I think I went when I were four. I just was four when I went.
Have you any idea how old your parents were when they went? Have you ever heard them talk about it?
R - No I don’t.
What good do you think school did you?
R - Well, I think it learnt you to look after yourself, they used to teach you to learn .. like, behave yourself like, more or less for discipline and things like that, they were good in that way.
Now that's interesting. A lot of people would have said straight away that they taught you to read and write and arithmetic and things that and the other.
R- Yes they did, but they also taught you to look after yourself and not be cheeky or owt like that they used to tell you.
Did you like school?
R - Not a right lot, no I weren't reight good at school.
Why not?
R - Because I didn’t think I were clever, I didn't ... Did I like what, that school I went to what we’re talking about now at Rows. It were all right, it were only infants you know. It were only young uns and it weren't so bad.
How long were you going to that school?
R - I think I were there till I were ten.
And then where did you go?
R- I went to St John's at Crawshawbooth.
Yes, that was another church school?
R - That were another church school yes.
Yes. And how long did you stay there?
R- Till I left school, till I left at fourteen, then. Yes.
Fourteen, yes. Well, we'll get round to that. That’d be in 1945?
R - That were 1945.
Forty-five yes, just at the end of t'war, that's it, aye.
R - Just at the end of the war.
So you are a contemporary with me, you're just a little bit older than me, but not much. What were the teachers strict about?
(100)
R - About your clothes, what you wore, being tidy.
Aye.
R - Yes, they used to like to see you were tidy and properly turned out. Yes, your dress.
Yes. Would you say they were more strict about things like dress and discipline than they were about actual learning?
R - That school I went to at first they were. They liked to see you clean and tidy, they also liked you to learn pretty quickly you know, but they used to more or less be as they liked discipline and be tidy and be punctual.
(5 min)
Did you ever have a chance to go to grammar school, from the other school at Crawshawbooth?
R - No.
No. Did anybody go to grammar school from there?
R- It were just certain ones you know, what, were the pick of the class what were clever and I don’t know anybody of our class what did.
Did you go to night school after you'd left school?
R - No.
When you were at school did you get home for your dinners?
R - When I went to St John's I used to stop to me dinners at school.
Were there school dinners then?
R- There were school dinners yes.
But when you were at Rows school you used to come home.
R- When we were at Rows school we used to come home. Well it were only across the road and I used to go across.
That's it yes. Did you get any training in anything any different than the three Rs at school? You know, for instance did you do handicrafts, anything like that. Woodwork, anything like that?
(150)
R - Not at the primary school, at the other school we used to do woodwork.
Yes. Did you like that?
R- Yes, we used to go every Monday. Every Monday morning.
When you say you used to go, did you do it at the school there or did you go somewhere else?
R- No we used to go to a woodwork class, to a woodworking place, that were St James’s in Rawtenstall. They had a building on its own for woodwork, it belonged to St James's school and they used to take us too.
How did you go, on a bus?
R – Yes, they used to take us on the bus yes.
How about sport at school?
R - Oh yes, football and cricket.
Again?
R - Yes and at St John’s we used to have gardening, that were every Friday were gardening. We had allotments.
Aye.
R- Yes and they used to take us gardening, we used to all have, four lads used to have a little plot of us own.
Which would you rather do, Woodwork and Gardening or Reading and Writing and Arithmetic?
R - Oh Gardening and Woodworking, I weren't right clever at school. No.
Oh now that’s … No, don't run yourself down, don't run yourself down, you’re no mug. Did your parents ever visit the school?
R - No.
You know like nowadays they have got these Parent Teachers Association and all the rest of it?
R – Yes, I know what you mean but no they didn't, no.
Did they ever show any interest in your school work?
R – Yes when we brought it home, homework. Yes me dad used to look at it because he were pretty clever were me dad you know?
Yes. Did the school ever get in touch with your parents about your progress, you know, did you have school report? Anything like that?
R - Yes we had school reports, they sent them yes. Yes me dad used to look at them and he used to give his verdict.
(200)
Which were?
R - As it were, we weren't doing right good you know, time we pulled us socks up kind of thing you know.
Oh that’s it aye. When it came round to leaving school was there any serious attempt made at what nowadays they call career guidance? You know, did anybody ever make any suggestions as to what you should do when you left school?
R - None at all, no.
None at all?
R - All as the teachers asked us was what did we fancy doing when we left school. We said “we don't know” you know. All we wanted to do was leave school. But there were scholarships what they could go for you know, in for a scholarship but I didn't go in for one.
What do you think your teacher would have thought of as a good job for you when you left school?
R - I don’t know.
What do you think they had in their minds for you when you left school? Let’s put it another way Jim. What jobs were open to you when you left school round here? What were the possibilities?
(10 min)(250)
R – Well, here there were only what there is today, there were textiles and slippers, I think that's all there were and the C.P.A. you know, that's all there were. There were like the trades what there were going you know, plumbing and things like that but it meant going to night school for it and that, you know, I just weren't interested you know?
R- Did you go straight into textiles?
R- No, I went to Rawtenstall to Ilex Mill, that were a slipper works and I started there on clicking, learning to click, it were what we called clicking.
(250)
What's clicking?
R - It's when they stamp heels out on a machine and me first wage were nineteen and six. First wages.
Yes. Well, when we get round to work we'll get round to that, but the point is that they never gave you any guidance and you just went into the first job that you could get in to.
R- No. I just went me own way, yes.
Yes aye. If you could have had a choice yourself, what would you have gone to do yourself, had you any ideas of your own, you know?
R - I hadn't at that time. No I didn’t, no I didn't.
No ideas, no. When you were at school can you remember the school Inspector coming round any time?
R – Yes, twice. He used to come round like and you know and he used to look at the register and to see who were missing and things like that and the other. Oh yes, I've known him come round to the house to the lads and lasses that were absent.
That’s the attendance feller isn’t it. Aye that's a different bloke really isn’t it. Aye, how about medical inspections at school?
R - Oh we used to have that, yes. Eye, ear and nose inspection. They had a look in your hair and such.
Aye, the nit nurse.
R- Oh yes, the nit nurses, yes we used to have them pretty regular.
Yes. Did you ever have nits?
R - Yes.
Yes aye. What were the cure then for nits?
R- Me mother used to buy a bottle, I don't know whether it were called Sulio or sommat.
Called? [Jim was right, I found a reference to Sulio as a cure for nits.]
R – Sulio, sommat like that. It were some stuff in a bottle, and it did smell. She used to put it on and rub it in us hair, and then leave it then. And then, then wash it out after and it did use to stink.
Did it do the job?
R - Oh yes it got rid of them. We only had them once. But you know you could catch it from school if somebody else had them you see. That's how you caught them. You weren't necessarily a dirty family.
Yes that's it. Oh no, Christ I have had nits. I've had nits aye and so have my kids.
R - I think a lot had them in them days, it were common thing were nits in them days.
The thing about nits, yes they still are about. And you knows they say that they could eradicate nits but do you know what the reservoir is for nits? You know where they strike up again from? It's the fathers. Because the fathers on the whole won't treat their head at the same time as the kids. Because they say that, I've read somewhere that I think it was for a million pounds they could eradicate nits in this country in four weeks because all they’d do was treat everybody twice inside four weeks for nits. And it’d mean that it’d kill every nit in the country off. But they'd have to do everybody and they said it's the men that won’t do it. Aye.
R - Won't do it.
That’s what they say anyway. Right, we'll have .. I'll ask you some questions about the neighbourhood, you know, the village of Loveclough itself. If somebody was ill or if somebody had died or was confined, would the neighbours come in and help?
R - Oh yes, yes they used to do yes.
How could they help?
R - Well they used to do washing for them or going to do some shopping for them. You know, and things like that.
Yes. If somebody died who laid them out?
R - Well, half .. they used to do it themselves. If a woman died I think the husband used to lay them out or if he didn't want to do then a neighbour would come in, and they used to lay then out. There used to be women what used to do it.
Used to do it, yes.
R- Yes, that were a common thing.
Yes. Did you have any experience yourself say when your mother died, of having a death you know, and having people laid out and lying in the house? Have you ever lived in a house where somebody's been laid out?
R – Yes me mother.
Your mother, yes, now what…
R - That's, that's the only one, and me sister.
Yes, when was that? Well your sister was ...
R - 1971
1971 yes.
Me mother died in 1960.
Nineteen sixty. Now .. and both of them were laid out at home were they?
R - Yes.
They didn't go to a chapel of rest?
R – No, both at home yes.
No, they were laid out at home and buried from home. How long were they at home before they were buried?
(350)(15 min)
R- I think about four days, yes four days.
Now, were there any problems, you know, with having somebody dead in the house for four days?
R – No.
No.
R- In what way do you mean problems?
Well Johnny now, I was asking John Greenwood about this and he said he could remember when his father died they had him laid out in the front room, and he said they draped a sheet across the bier and had the coffin laid out. He said underneath the bier, he said he’d never forget it, he said there was an enamel pan with Jeyes fluid in it so that the smell of the Jeyes fluid hid the smell of the corpse you see?
R- Oh yes, smell of the corpse, yes.
That’s just what I was wondering you know whether there was any problems like that.
R – No, we didn’t do anything. No.
Because, I mean that’s one of the reasons why people nowadays usually have them in a chapel of rest you know because, it all depends what people have died of, and what the weather’s like you know, I mean, it's one of them things.
R- Yes that's right, yes. No there were no problem as far as that were concerned.
No.
Did it bother you at all?
R- No.
Was the coffin open or closed?
R – Opened.
Opened. Why?
R - Well I mean they're just for people to come and have a look at them you know?
Did people come to look?
R - Oh yes. Yes we had a lot of people came looking at me mother.
How was your mother dressed? Was she dressed in ordinary clothes?
R - In the coffin do you mean?
Yes.
R – No, she were in white. That's right, all white.
And your sister?
R- And me sister and all yes.
Yes, aye. And then you'd be going, you'd go from there to the church for the service and from there to…
R - To the Crematorium.
They were both cremated were they?
Cremated, yes.
Which Crematorium was that, Rawtenstall?
R – No. It were Burnley.
Burnley? Aye. And then what did you do with the ashes afterwards?
R - Well we didn't have them, we didn't get the ashes, they were put in...
No, they’d be put on the Garden of Rest down there?
R- Yes.
Which do you think in the best way, burying or cremation?
(400)
R- I don't, cremation I think is better.
Why?
R- Why? I don't know
No? Go on…
R – Well. It saves all the people going to the burial ground and keeping it tidy and putting fresh flowers on ‘em. I know some probably do like to do that but if you don't, if you, once you start leaving it and it overgrows you know? And it's …
Yes. I agree with you Jim. I agree with every word you say. You know, the only place I think in this country where they do things sensibly, in Scotland where all burial grounds, it doesn’t matter what denomination they are, are a charge on the rates and the Council look after them. And if ever you go to Scotland look round and you’ll find that every graveyard and every burial ground is as tidy as a little park because they treat them as parks.
R - That's right yes.
And I think that's the way to do, I think that our burial grounds and cemeteries in this country are an absolute disgrace.
R- Yes, they are.
I think they are an absolute scandal. And you get situations like an old burial ground I could take you to now that's in the middle of an engineering factory. It’s an old Methodist burial ground that's just been absolutely let run derelict and I think it’s terrible. Well you can find then all over the place and I think they are absolutely disgusting.
R - They are.
And I think that they are one of the finest arguments for cremation that there is. Because it saves all that.
R- Yes I agree with you there.
Yes. I completely agree with you. Now you have already told me about neighbours visiting each other and it’d be a cup of tea and camping and all the latest scandal.
R - Yes, all the latest gossip.
Aye. Who’d had a baby a bit early and what not. Did they do a lot of talking on the door steps in summer?
R – Yes. Always see them camping outside. And I can picture me mother camping now at the front one Sunday afternoon and me dad - I have a photograph actually of it - and me dad coming out of the club when it closed at three o'clock. And he used to come out at the front door of the club and me mother’s at the front, my wife’s there and a nice Sunday afternoon it were, with the pram with the youngest, it were our Sheila what were in the pram then. And they were coming out of the club then. And you could see woman all down the row, all out on the window bottoms. Aye, all camping.
(450)(20 min)
Aye. Can you remember neighbours, I mean, up to now we have been talking about neighbours getting on with each other you know, visiting each other and helping each other when they were ill. Can you remember them falling out with each other for anything? You know, neighbours quarrelling.
R- Yes, a few times, over next door's kids throwing stones and doing this that and the other. All t’kids falling out and then mothers coming and knocking on the door, “Your so and so’s done so and so!” And, and they start shouting at one another and then they go in and clash the door and they won’t speak to one another for a few days. That's what they used to do yes. And then they'd come round after a day or two, but it were all done through the ruddy kids. Aye, them falling out.
I’ll tell you what I can remember hearing women arguing about, washing lines.
R - Oh yes.
Have you ever heard them arguing about washing lines, whose washing line, whose it were you know and .. and this and that.
R - They used to put the washing on one line and used to go out, “What are you doing with your washing on my line?” “Well I thought that were my line!” So that’s your line over there, and they argued.
Aye, that's it. You were saying about people like Billy Fawcett and Arthur you know, that were really poor, were they treated any differently from the other children at school. Now for a start off, did you treat them any differently than other children? Did it make any difference to you the fact that they were so poor?
R - No we used to play with them just the same as the others.
Yes.
R- But we used, it were always at the back of us mind, you know, as they were really poor and they were being hard done to and ...
Yes. Do you think the teachers treated them any differently?
R- No, I don't think they did. No they didn't. No I can’t say as we did. No.
Now, you were telling me, but it was while the tape was off, about them. Anyway you were telling me about them. I'd like to coax you to tell me more about it, about them being in cast off women’s clothes and shoes. Yes.
(500)
Yes. So they were actually wearing dresses to school?
R - Arthur Fawcett. No, it weren't Arthur it were Billy. He had a woman’s frock on, he went to school with a woman's frock on and high heel shoes what belonged to his, well it must have been his mother, when she left them you know. And they were in the house and that's all they had to wear. They'd no pants and that were it. And he went to school with them on. It's incredible, high heeled shoes, miles too big for him. He used to slur out of them going to school. And he used to go with ‘em on in winter time, snow on the ground and all.
This went on for a fair while?
R - Yes.
So a family like that would be the sort of family that you'd think of as rough.
R- Oh yes.
Now, disregarding the Fawcett’s for a minute, what do you think were the things which'd make you think about a family as rough? You know, would it be the way they were dressed, or the way the parents acted or what. You know, there would be certain families apart from the Fawcett’s that you’d regard as rough, wouldn't there?
R- Yes.
Besides yourselves. Now what do you think would generally be the reason why they were regarded as rough? In other words what was the difference between a rough family and a respectable family?
R - I don’t know. In what way do you mean like?
Well, for instance would it be, I know I'm pushing you a bit here. I don’t want to put words into your mouth that I want you to tell me. But for instance I think that you'd think more about a family that looked after the children than one that didn't look after the children wouldn't you?
R- Yes.
(25 min)(500)
You know, were these the sort of things that divided the rough families from the respectable families you know. Were they the families that kept themselves clean and kept things tidy, things like that?
R - There were, there were a lot of families what were .. what were poor, not as poor as Fawcetts but their houses were clean, you know, they had pretty good…
Yes. But I think perhaps we are talking about different things here aren't we. I think you'll agree with me if I say something to you, that it was possible to be poor and respectable, and have a fair amount of money and be rough, do you understand what I mean? It was, wasn’t it?
R- Yes.
It wasn't really just a question of being poor or being well off, it was the way people behaved wasn't it. Now what were the sort of things that would divide the bad families from the good families? The respectable families from the families that weren't respectable?
R - What divided them?
Yes you know say you had somebody that for instance didn't put stuff in the dustbin, they’d just throw it down in the bloody street. There’d be families like that about wouldn’t there?
R - There were quite a few families like that. Yes, what never used the dustbins yes.
Yes, and I mean, they wouldn't necessarily be the poor families.
R- Oh no. They probably had plenty of money you know but they didn’t live the way you thought as they'd live you see.
That’s it aye.
R- They put on airs and graces, you know, like they…
Aye, just dirty buggers in other words.
R - Yes and they used to have plenty of money, and you used to think “Eh, them dirty buggers” you know and they can’t have so much money you know and .. but they were well off you know, they were better off than you were.
Would you agree with me that, in the times we are talking about when both you and I were lads, it was very important for people to keep up certain standards and be respectable no matter what the circumstances were. People used to place a great deal importance on being though of as respectable, especially women who wanted to be thought of as tidy women and good providers and this, that and the other. It was very important wasn’t it. Probably more so than nowadays. Yes aye. I’ll tell you something that’s very closely connected with that. It’s always struck me and I don’t know whether it has ever struck you. When you were young were you ever told that you shouldn‘t go into people's houses when they were having a meal?
(600)
R - Oh yes. Yes we used to always be told not to go at meal times and whenever we went we’d always to knock an the door and wait till somebody come and asked us in. We hadn't to go in, only if we were invited. If ever we went to a house we had to knock and wait. And me mother or me dad used to say “Where are you going?” Like “We are going to so and so’s.” “Look at the clock, you are not going yet, they are having their tea.” And that were it.
Yes. Now why do you think that was? What do you think the reason for that were? Have you any thoughts about it yourself?
R- I don't know, it's 'happen because you were showing your manners you know, that you were brought up that way as you hadn't to do it. When you went after they'd had their meal they'd probably think “Oh well, they know their manners, their parents have told them they haven’t to go”
That's it aye. It's a very complicated thing and a lot of people don’t realise how complicated. What we are talking about is what the academics call the social structure of the community. The view has been put forward that one of the reasons for this was, and this is very common, I was told the same things when I was a lad, exactly what you've just said. Me mother would look at the clock and say “You’re not going round to so and so’s, they’ll be having their tea.” That sort of thing. And there were two reasons, well it was the same reason really, people didn't like other people to see how they were eating because if they were eating reight well they didn't want other people to be jealous of them, and if they weren't eating very well because they were poor, they were having a bad week or a bad time they didn't want other people to know about it. And it was a sort of a self-defence mechanism you know. People didn't want other people coming into their houses when they were having a meal so they didn't let the children go into the other people's houses.
R- That's right, yes.
And I think perhaps there is a lot of truth in that.
R - Yes there is, yes.
In later years when I think about it I’ll admit, like you, it never struck me at the time. But having thought about it a lot I think perhaps there was a lot of truth in that, meals were a very private thing weren't they, they were for the family. And I don’t know about you but it was very seldom in those days that you'd get invited into a friend's house to have something to eat. Nowadays it's fairly common. When I was married, when I was living at home with the family, many a time the kids had brought somebody home and you’d say “Oh, you'll stop to your tea.” you know.
R - Yes. Well that does happen here yes.
But it never happened when I was a lad.
R- No. No, we never had anybody come in and just say “Right, sit down, we are going to have us tea and you can have some.” We used to have tea just with the family, and that were unless we got invited.
(650)(30 min)
That's it unless it was a special thing like Sunday.
R- To go for a special thing, a birthday or sommat like that.
That's it and it was always tinned salmon. It was always tinned salmon Jim. Anyway we're just going on a bit now. The 1930s and 1940s were rough times, no doubt about that.
R- Yes.
Can you remember anything about any relief going on like soup kitchens or anything like that?
R- No.
No. Can you ever remember anybody on about workhouse or anything like that? They had all been done away with then?
R - I can’t remember them.
Can you remember what sort of a state widows were in that lived as say people, women without husbands, were they any worse off than other people? Had you any widows living near you?
R - I think there were but I'm not reight sure. Well they had the widow’s pension had they then?
I don't think they had Jim.
R- Hadn’t they? They'd only ...
I don’t think they had. Or at least it’d be very meagre.
R- Yes. No, they hadn’t because I think they used to like baby-sit. Look after other families children and that's how they got their money more or less you know. And there were…
Yes. There’d be Parish?
R- Pardon?
There’d be Parish Relief at one time wouldn't there? I know that was going on up to about nineteen .. I don't know whether it was going on in the 30’s but it was going on during the 20's.
R – Yes. I doubt it.
They used to get so much off the parish. You know, like Lloyd George. Well, Lloyd George were the sick pay, but it was the same sort of thing. How often did you see your relatives? You know like your aunty Bertha, anybody like that?
R- Yes well me aunty Bertha and me aunty Annie, they lived on the same row. I used to see them every day, you know?
So you'd see them just about every day aye.
R- Every day yes.
Were your mother on good terms with them?
R - Oh yes.
If you were asked, this is a question that I hate, but what social class do you think your family belonged to? You know, would you say that you were working class?
R - They were just working class.
Yes. Now, would you say that you were at the bottom end of the working class? The middle or the top?
R – No, I should think we were at the top end of the working class. I think we were a bit better off than a lot were you know, we weren’t too bad you know.
Yes, that's it. If you just thought about the men that lived down that road that you were living on would they all have similar jobs to your dad?
(700)
R- They nearly all worked at C.P.A. round there. There were one or two, just odd uns what were miners and they worked at the pit you know? Worked up there.
Yes. Which pit was it?
R- Burnley.
Burnley aye.
R- At was it Bank hall?
Yes, Bank Hall Colliery. It's been done away with now, yes, Bank Hall..
R- It used to be, yes.
Was there any area round Loveclough that was thought of as the rough part of Loveclough?
R - The rough part. No not really, it were all about the same this area.
Yes. I think that's one of the things about Loveclough, it…
R - It were like a well knit community you know, all about the same.
So there weren’t any parts that you think of as better either.
R- No, not really no. Not till you got down into Crawshawbooth and they were a bit better there like, at Crawshawbooth but not round our way.
Who were the most important people in Loveclough?
R- Eh, I forget their names now, they lived in a big house just farther down than we were. I think they were called Kershaw.
What would they be like manufacturers or something.
R- They were, they owned the mills.
Yes. Now apart from them would there be anybody else in the village that would be considered as being more important than anybody else? You know say by virtue of their job.
R- No.
I'm thinking about people like the postmaster or the parson or the doctor.
(35 min)(750)
R - Well there used to be a doctor, there used to be a parson, a vicar but I don’t know whether they were important or not.
Were they important to you?
R- No, not really. No.
No. That’s a good a way of looking at it. How about police in the area. Did you have your own policeman? Were there a policeman living in the village.
R- There were a policeman in the village, a village policeman yes.
Yes. What did you think about him?
R- Oh he were all right, he were pretty strict like he used to punch you if you did owt wrong or owt like that. He were all right. Called him Bobby Light.
Light?
R- Bobby Light he were called. And he lived in the middle of a row of houses, right against the park and he were all right.
You see he lived in the village and he’d have to get on with people.
R- Yes well he did, he lived in the middle of the row of houses that I lived in in the village. Aye.
Yes. When you were a lad did anything over happen like a murder, a robbery, anything exciting like that?
R- I can't remember anything.
Can't remember anything? No big police activity, no big break-in?
R- No.
No. Can you remember anyone when you were young being called either a real gentleman or a real lady? You know like your mother saying “She is a real lady!” or a real gentleman?
R - No.
No. If she did refer to anybody like that what do you think it’d take for her to refer to somebody like that? Because I'm sure that, in common with my mother she will have used the term from time to time. What do you think constituted a lady or a gentleman to your mother?
R- I don't know, do you mean the Mayor's wife or somebody like that?
Aye, that's it aye. Anyway. We’ll get away from the social business, we have got through that now, we'll get on to sommat that's a bit. Did you have any special cures for illness in the family? Do you know, like the sweaty sock round the neck and so on.
R- Yes, I know what you mean. We used to .. I'll tell you what we used to have, vinegar on brown paper for tooth ache. We used to do that, I used to put it on, I used to have tooth ache and I used to put vinegar on brown paper and put it on your face and put a scarf round your neck and it used to take it away. Then we had all the normal things, rubbing bottles and things like that.
Aye. Beechams pills and Syrup of Figs. Tell me, did they ever give you Easton Syrup? Have you ever come across that? God, it was one of these things, a tonic. It just looks like pee, it's yellow in a bottle and God it tastes terrible, Easton Syrup.
(40 min)(800)
R- Easton Syrup ... never heard of it.
Aye, it's got strychnine in it, that's why it tastes so bloody terrible. And you said your mother never made any of her own remedies? She never made anything like camomile tea? Belladonna plasters or owt like that?
R Oh aye I've seen them put then on me dad for his bad back. I've seen them Belladonna Plasters yes.
Aye, Belladonna Plasters, I've got one of them at home actually. Can you ever remember the doctor coming? Did you ever have to call the doctor?
R- Yes, Doctor Braham, he were called Doctor Braham, he lived at Crawshawbooth. Yes, he were the family doctor.
And did you have to pay him when he came?
R - Me mother used to pay, you had to pay him yes. I don't know how much but she used to pay him then for a visit.
That's it. Can you over remember having any difficulty paying him?
R - No not as I know of. No.
No. Did your family belong to a friendly society, anything like that do you know. Friendly Society, Burial Society, anything like that, you know these little insurances?
R – No, I don’t know. I think she were in an Insurance but I don't know what it were. No, I can't remember.
If your father was off work ill would he get any sick pay?
R - I think he did.
And he’d be covered by t'Lloyd George wouldn't he? Can you ever remember the family paying anything to a hospital scheme? You know at one time they used to knock a penny or twopence a week out of your wage didn’t they.
R - I think they used to knock some out of me dad's wage. I'm not very sure but I think they did.
Did anyone in the family over have to have any operations at hospital? You know, go in for an operation?
R – No.
Can you remember any babies being born at home? Can you remember, no, you were only eighteen months old weren't you?
R- I were, yes.
Were there any disease that the family particularly dreaded catching? You know, when you were young. Think about the diseases that were about.
R- I had diphtheria.
You had diphtheria?
R- I had diphtheria when I were young. I were only ten when I had that.
Aye. Can you remember anything about it?
R- Not a reight lot no. I can remember being in hospital with it, and I remember me mother and dad coming and looking at me, and they could only see me through the window, they weren’t allowed to come in the ward.
Yes. Did they tube you? You know, did they cut your throat and tube you?
R- Not as I know, I can't remember that. I can remember being in hospital but what they did I don't know.
But I that was the thing about diphtheria, your throat swelled up and they used to have to cut your throat and put a tube in didn't they?
R – Yes. You couldn't breath aye. But I can remember them coming and looking at me through the window.
And how about scarlet fever, can you remember that?
R- I can remember people having it yes but we didn’t have anything like that.
Did you know anybody that had rickets?
R - No.
Do you know anybody that has bow legs that was young when you were young, that has bow legs now?
(850)
R- Yes, there used to be a lad, just a bit older than me, Jack Smith, he had bow legs.
That's nearly sure rickets you know.
R- Is it?
Malnutrition.
R - Oh his legs.
When your mother had a child, if she hadn't enough milk to breast feed, how would she have fed the children? Would she use the bottle?
R - I should imagine she would, yes.
Was your mother particular about things like disinfecting the house and catching flies?
R - Oh yes. Yes she were clean in the house, we had fly catchers up and…
Yes. Oh aye, with a million flies on? Aye. Do you think that she understood the connection between dirt and disease, you know, germs and disease?
R- Yes, I think she did yes.
Oh it's interesting in itself is that, you see because a lot of people didn't. We were on about medicine and it seems to me that I can always remember when I was a lad, in spring you used to be given brimstone and treacle. Did you get the same? Black treacle with sulphur in?
R- We had black treacle yes. A spoonful of black treacle, but not brimstone, no.
You were lucky you didn’t get the sulphur with it.
R- We didn't get the sulphur in it no.
But what did you get the black treacle for, then?
R - I don’t know, she used to give us that though for colds and what have you and things like that. I don't know what ...
Was there anything else that your mother would give you? Can you remember her giving you anything else? You know, favourite remedies?
R- No I can't remember anything like that.
God, when I think of the number of things my mother gave us. You must have been very lucky. The number of things my mother had in the cupboard do you know, like, what was it? Fenning’s Fever Cure and Fenning’s Cooling Tablets and Beecham’s Powders and Beecham’s Pills.
R- Yes. Oh yes we had all them what you are talking about and Vaseline and zinc ointment and .. all things like that.
Aye ... and boracic acid powder. That reckoned to just about cure anything didn't it?
R - Boracic powder, yes.
Aye, boracic acid powder and surgical spirits aye. I think that people used to have more of that stuff about in them days than they do now because I mean now you go down to the doctor and he gives you penicillin for every bloody thing.
R- Yes they do, yes.
In those days it was the boracic acid powder and the surgical spirits and the Belladonna Plasters. I mean, that was how people kept healthy. Anyway we’ll stop this tape here, Jim. You have done well tonight. Thank you very much.
SCG/09 July 2003
7,246 words.
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 79/SD/04
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON AUGUST 15TH 1979 AT 26 HARGREAVES DRIVE, RAWTENSTALL. THE INFORMANT IS JIM RILEY, MULE SPINNER AT SPRING VALE MILL. THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Right Jim, we are getting on fairly well. Now, I have already asked you about what your father did. What sort of hours did he work Jim?
R - The hours was half past seven until half past five and some mornings he used to go in early at seven o'clock. Some mornings, not every morning but it just depends if he’d certain colours to mix up you know? For to get ready for the printers.
How long a dinner hour did they have?
R - Half an hour.
Half an hour. So he was doing a nine and a half hour a day.
R- Nine and a half hour a day.
Aye, it’s a fair do regular. And I've asked you before if you'd any idea what his wage were. Would you have any idea what his wage were?
R- No I don't know and I couldn’t tell you what it were his wage, no.
Would it be, a colour man, would it be a fairly well paid job?
R - It were a pretty good, it were a well paid job, it were a good job were mixing colours.
(50)
Like could you equate that with say an overlooker’s job? You know, or something like that nowadays you know?
R- Yes, I think you could.
Yes. About on the same level in the mill. And do you know whether he was paid holiday pay, was he paid for his holidays do you know?
R- I don't think they had holiday pay then.
Now, you've mentioned about him doing a bit of watch repairing and hair cutting.
R - Hair cutting, yes,
Did he have any part-time jobs? You know, did he ever, I know you mentioned that he were pretty good singer, did he sing in the clubs to make money, or did he just sing for enjoyment?
R- No, not to make money. All as he did where he got paid for doing it were cutting people's hair. That’s the only thing he did. But, no he didn't go round like, being a collector for anything or anything like that you know?
A lot of people did like you know, used to have part-time jobs.
R- Part-time jobs, yes.
Can you ever remember him having an accident at work?
R – No, he has had trouble with dermatitis in his hands. That's caused through colour.
(100)
Aye.
R- Mixing colours yes, and he has that today, to this day, dermatitis. And he has to wear gloves when they break out you see? And he gets a rash all on the back of his hands.
Yes. And he reckons that's with…?
R- It’s with colours, yes, he reckons it's through that.
Can you ever remember him being out of work through sickness?
R - No, not for any length of time, you know he probably had odd days off like because of a bout of flu or something like that.
Yes. That’s it aye.
R- ... or something like that, but not serious illnesses.
Aye. Can you ever remember him being on strike or out of work, on short time?
R- They did do some short time a few times but not a right lot, just odd times.
What would that be? Trade? .. bad trade?
R – Yes when .. like trade recession you know, it were just things were a bit dicey a time or two.
(5 min)
How did that, did that make any difference to you at home? Could you see any difference at home, did you have to pull your horns In a bit?
R- Oh you just, Like we had not so much wage coming in because he were the wage earner were me dad you know?
That's it, aye, he were the only one.
R - You see, and he were the only wage earner up to us starting work you see?
Yes. Well I’ll get round to that. Do you know whether he belonged to a trade union?
R- I think you've asked me that haven't you? No?
No I don't think so, no.
R – No, I don't know whether he did or not.
(150)
No, I asked you about political parties before.
R- Yes, you did.
Now, before you started full time did you ever have a part-time job? Did you do any work at all before like delivering papers or owt like that?
R- I used to do yes when I were at school, delivering papers. I were a paper boy, I used to do nights after school you know. I didn't do them, at morning, I did them at nights, and Saturday mornings.
Yes. How much did you get for that Jim?
R- I think it were about 7/0. [35p]
Yes. So that’d be like probably six nights a week and Saturday mornings wouldn’t it? There’d be papers Saturday night as well wouldn’t there?
R- Yes there were the Saturday night paper, yes.
Right yes. And what did you do with that money? That money that you earned for the papers, was that yours?
R- That was mine for to spend yes.
That were your spending money.
R – Yes, I used to keep that.
Yes. Now I’ve already asked you what you did when you left school and you went into the slipper works didn't you?
R- Yes.
Now I asked you then if there was anything different, you know, you said that there was nothing different than slippers and textiles. Was there nothing at all? No engineering you know, railway, were there any railway work when you left school?
R - Oh yes there were, there was railway but 1 wasn't interested in going on to the railways or engineering. Same as I said, I weren't just clever enough for engineering and I never bothered do you know?
(200)
And then me father got this job for me at Ilex Mill you see and he said “We’ll go down when you leave school and we’ll see about it.”
Now when you went down there. Was that your first job?
R- Yes.
And you did tell me what your wage were, were It nineteen shillings and…
R – Nineteen and six.
Nineteen and six yes. What did you do with that wage? Were you tipping up?
R- Well, I did. I did tip up but not it all, but my parents said I could keep my first week’s wage, which were the normal thing then for your first week. They said '”You can keep it” but I did tip some of it up and I kept some but I give me mother some of it.
Yes. Round Barlick it seemed to be fairly common, of course this is going back a lot farther, when they were tipping up they used to got about penny in each shilling for themselves. Do you think you were getting more than that? That’d mean you’d he getting about two bob when you'd tipped up, would you be getting more than that?
R- Oh no, I’d get more than that, yes I got more than two bob yes.
Aye. That’s interesting thing is that, especially with big families. But going back a bit further than we are talking about in 1945. That was when a lot of people bought their houses, when they had a lot of children out working and tipping up you know. But anyway, now when you were working down there how long were you there?
R - six weeks.
(250)
Six weeks! Now then, you're smiling a bit when you say that? Go on, tell me what happened at that shop.
R- Well, It were a boring job, I didn’t like it and I couldn’t settle.
What exactly were you doing there?
R - I were on a clicking machine stamping heels for slippers.
Yes, out of leather?
R- Out of leather yes.
And that's all you were doing?
R - That's all I were doing, I were bored.
So after six weeks you decided that Ilex and you had better part.
R – Yes, but I also wanted to go where I could earn a bit more money. Because with there only being me father at home wage earning and I were the first worker I wanted to go and earn a decent wage to take into the home you see?
(10 min)
Yes.
R- And me sister couldn't work because she had epileptic fits. She were always at home, she never worked didn't me sister. So you see, as I were the first worker…
Yes. Your brother was younger than you, that's it.
R- He were 18 months younger so I wanted to earn a decent wage.
So what did you turn to then?
R - I went into cotton then.
Yes. Now where did you go?
R- I went to Goodshawfold Manufacturing Company, Oak Mill, Dunnockshaw. That's just on the roadside as you come down. Well they are closed now.
Aye. That's the one, below Clowbridge yes. And when did you go to work there Jim, that’d be about what, that’d be about nineteen forty six?
R- I went there in nineteen forty five.
Aye, the end of nineteen forty five was it?
R- 1945, November.
November.
R- That November. Yes.
Yes. Now what did you go there as?
R- Just a cotton operative, doing any job they put me on, I started in the devil room, ‘in’t devil hoil’ as they called it.
That's it aye.
R- And I worked on what they call a little Austin. It's like a little breaker machine. You feed your stuff in from the bale, it chews it up and comes out at the back and then you take it off out of the bin at the back and you take it for the scutcher to run. And I did that for about oh, 12 or 14 weeks and then gradually they moved me up step by step going through the mill you see.
What did you go on to after you'd been on the devils?
R- Can breaking, that's with the doublers. [Breaker cards for the Derby Doubler]
Aye, cans, yes.
R - Where your stuff comes off in coils in the can, all as I were doing was changing cans, putting empties on and the full ones on the doubler to run.
That’s it aye.
R- And that were me job, I'd to change all the cans when they got full.
Aye. So you had so many breaker cards and you were going round them…
R- Yes ... and changing them.
And changing them over.
R - A can breaker were that yes. Now then I got a little bit extra wage then see, my wage went up a few shillings then. Then they took me from there, I went up in the mill then, upstairs where the mules were, bobbin piking. After the mule spinner had done with the bobbins I fetched them back and I piked them off.
Now then, explain that to me, you piked them off.
R - Well, after the mule spinner's done with the bobbin, when they've run them off, there is a bit of cotton left on the bobbin.
Aye you mean after the weaver?
R – No, after the spinner's done with the bobbin. What I'm doing you know when I am spinning?
Yes.
R - After I take the empty bobbin out, you know that bobbin I’ve to put on the top?
Oh yes, bobbin, aye I'm thinking of pirns. I'm sorry, aye.
R – Yes, well the full bobbin with the roving stuck on.
With the roving on yes that's it, bobbin, I'm with you.
(350)
R- Now then, that goes back and I have a piker and I used to pike it off into a waste basket, see? Now then I did that for a few weeks and then I went from there onto bobbin carrying, that were taking the bobbins to the mule spinners, the full ones.
Aye, that's it yes.
R- I kept going up, step be step, and while I were doing that bobbin carrying I used to nip in the wheelgate and try me hand at piecing.
Taking an end up, aye ...
R - Piecing up. I were a bit fumbly at first, but I soon got into it you know and it were .. and I thought then as it were a job as I could get into quietly and I liked it. But I didn't get on spinning for two years.
Aye. Was that the usual sort of way to get to learn spinning?
R- That were the routine for everybody.
Do it yourself? Aye.
R – Yes. But you could also go there for a job and learn piecing, and they used to fetch you into the mill then, and then you'd go in the mill rooms and you go and they'd take you to the spinners and they say “Right, he wants to learn spinning, can you learn him?” He’d say “Right” and you'd have to stop in with him all the time. The spinner. But I didn't do that, I went round the mill doing odd jobs, and then I used to go in and learnt it.
Which were possibly the best way.
R - It were the best way to learn you see
Aye, that's it.
R - And I soon got into it you see?
Oh yes. How long were you at Oak Mills Jim?
R – Twenty four years.
Twenty four years
R - Twenty four years.
Ah .. So you were at Oak Mills, that's a bit of a facer. Now then wait a minute. You've quite knocked me over there. So you went there in 1945 ...
R- Yes ... 1945.
End of 1945 and you'd be there till 1969?
(400)
R- Well actually it weren't quite twenty four years, it shut down October 1968, that's when we were made redundant. And I worked from 1945 up to 1968, October.
Right. Well we'll talk about Oak Mill then. And you were working there all those years and you were there two years did you say, before you go to do …
R- Before I got on learning to be a spinner. Well I went on actually on piecing. You'd to be a piecer first before you got a pair of mules of your own.
(15 min)
Now then, when you say you got to be a piecer, was that, did they have somebody who did nothing but piece up for them?
R- No. I were more or less the run about for them.
Aye that's it yes.
R- You see I brewed up for them and things like that. I did spin, I did piecing the same as they did and I used to change the bobbins up just the same, and doff off but I used to do all the running about for them.
That's it aye.
R - I used to do all the sweeping up and ...
Yes, you were like a mule spinner's labourer. That's it, aye.
R- I were a mule spinner’s labourer.
That’s it, aye.
R- What they call a piecer.
Yes. You don’t have those now, do you?
R - We don’t no because these mules what I’m on they are not big enough for to have a piecer on. The mules I worked on at Dunnockshaw were fourteen hundred spindles and they were a hell of a size you know.
Now what were you spinning there? Were they condenser mules?
R- Yes, condensers same as what I’m running now, same counts more or less. There were 7’s, 8’s, and 9’s. Nines were a fine count, we run a lot of nines. But it used to spin well because they used to spin the best comber you see and it were that Egyptian.
Yes, that’s it.
R- And it were damn good stuff, you know?
Good stuff, aye.
R- And theme mules were enormous, bloody marvellous! Fourteen hundred spindles is a lot of spindles you know on a mule?
Yes. That's on one side of the mule isn’t it. One frame.
R- No that's on all the lot.
On the lot, on the set of two mules, that's it?
R- Yes on the set of mules and there were three pair in that room I worked in.
Yes. How many is there on that frame that you've got up there? That mule you've got in there.
R - Nine hundred.
Nine hundred, yes, I did reckon it up as getting on for a thousand. There are nine hundred.
R- It’s about nine hundred and sommat. Four hundred and odd a side, four fifty sommat I think it is.
So it'd be half as big again as them.
R - Yes. And them at Dunnockshaw were narrow gauge spindles, a lot thinner spindles, and a lot nearer together than them I'm running. Them's broad gauge them but these were very narrow spindles, right thin uns and very close together.
Yes. So you couldn't spin as big a yarn package on them.
R - No.
What were you spinning onto then Jim, were you spinning on to the…
R- We used to spin on to what they called paste bottoms. That were before the tubes came in.
Aye. Now tell me about that first. I’ve seen paste bottoms and I know what they are but now I want you to tell me what paste bottoms were.
R- Oh, paste bottoms were actually, we used to paste the bottom of the cop when it were wound on with starch, so they starched the bottom end of the cop so as it would harden it, go stiff, so as your bottom when you took the cop off, it wouldn't pull out you see? And it used to stiffen it.
Yes. So there was nothing inside that cop.
R- It were hollow when you took it off.
It were hollow when you took it off. That's it yes.
R- And when you started to doff them off you'd to push them up with your fingers and bend the end over with your hand. Just bend the tip over so as they don't slide back down on the spindle. And you used to press up, and just knock it over like that so as they don't drop down again. And then when we used to gait up the same as I do now with our mules, with the pirns, we used to do what you call whipping them. Now then, they used to get the faller wire and whip down quick with the top faller and the bottom faller while you make the rim band and it just wound a little bit on the bottom of your cop, at the bottom. And you used to do that for two draws and then you'd starch it and it got you a proper, a good solid bottom on your cop.
(500)
Yes so you'd make two little traverses at the bottom instead of a big traverse and then you'd starch that over the top of it and this is on the spindle itself isn’t it?
R- That’s on the bare spindle.
Yea. How did you get it to trap an the spindle, Jim? You know, how was the thread trapped. Nowadays when you're doing this and you're spinning with pirns, when you pushed your presser down, that thread that's left on is actually trapped under the bottom of the pirn.
R - It's under the pirn.
It’s under the pirn and when it starts to turn it's got to start going round. Now where was it trapped on the spindle?
R - On to the bare spindle, just as it is on the bare spindle now.
So In other words, when you were finishing, before you doffed you your faller, your faller wire went down, so it took that thread right down to the bottom.
R- It took it to the bottom.
And you let a little bit run on at the bottom.
R - And it let it wind round on the bottom you see.
Aye that's it. And that was the start of your next cop in there.
R – Yes. That were your base of your next cop. And once you'd what they call whipping, you'd to do it two draws to get that bottom on. One draw of whipping wouldn't. be enough. You had to do it a second time to get it round like, what you call a double round.
Yes. That's it.
R- And then when you’d starched it, like happen half way up it’d set had your starch. But if you didn’t starch them right you started pushing ‘em up and all the bottoms would pull off. Then they were no good and you had to throw them away.
Yes, waste again.
R- To go back as waste. And then you used to get a rocket off the spinner you know. He’d punch your arse. That's what would happen.
So you’d have the paste in a little can would you?
R - It were in a little bucket.
What did you put it on with, a brush?
R- And you had a brush, it were a long one made of brass and you had a little door on the lid of the can and you just pulled the door back when you wanted to use it. And you had like these tins you fill in the farmyard with milk…
Yes, a lading tin. Yes.
R- A little ladle. You used to get your ladle and fill it all up and slur your lid, close your lid, and then just tip it half way so that your starch would run out on to your brush, and then you used to brush along the bottom of the cop while it were running. And then when you'd finished you'd starch all down your overalls.
Is that right?
R- It were splashing off, well it were splashing off the cop you see? The spindle.
Yes because they'd be moving then yes.
R – You had to starch with it moving, you couldn't starch with them stopped. Because all the cop had to be starched you see.
Yes, that's it, both sides yes.
R - And then you'd go down like that you see.
Aye, that's it aye. Well now that's fascinating that is, paste bottoms. I've seen ‘em and heard about them but I’ve never had anybody talk about how you made them.
R- I know yes.
Now then, they brought out an improvement on paste bottoms didn't they, which were paper bottoms.
R - They started on to what they call paper tube.
Yes, now, you tell me about them. We are talking now about the little half tube that went on the bottom, aren’t we, or did you go straight on to the full tube?
R – No, we went on the full, the big tube. Seven and a quarter inch long they were.
Yes. Have you ever spun on to the little tube, the little sleeve at the bottom?
R – No.
You know, about so long. [SG indicates two inches]
R- We've had little blue paper tubes, a bit bigger than that what you are saying, happen about five inches happen, but them were seven and a quarter what we were on to, we didn't ...
Yes well all them little, all these little sleeves were, they were really thin paper and they didn't go anywhere near half way through the cop. They only went up about two inches and they must have gone down and slipped those on to the spindles first and then spun on to those and they acted instead of paste bottoms.
R- Were it not fine spinning? That what you are talking about?
Yes that was.
R- It must have been fine spinning. It weren't shoddy. [Shoddy is actually a woollen spinning term meaning reclaimed wool. Condenser spinning is the same but usually referred to as waste spinning or condenser.]
Oh no. These were 44s and 60s Egyptian, really fine stuff.
(600)
R- Yes. I thought so, we didn’t do ‘em with shoddy then.
Yes. But I know that they used to use paste bottoms, and then, as I say, with this fine spinning they went then on them paper sleeves in the bottom. And then onto the paper tubes and eventually an to Welsh hats. But anyway, you went straight on to the paper tubes.
R - We went on to paper tubes yes.
And was that better for you as a spinner?
R - Oh yes, it did away with the starching for a start. You had no starch and your overalls didn't get starched up. It were a lot cleaner aye.
Yes. Could you get as much on them as you could on to the spindle?
R- Yes, because they were only like a fine paper you see.
Yes. They were very thin weren't they?
R- And they were very thin. And for the counts as we were running, we were only running between sevens and nines. Well it weren't a right thick coarse count you see so we were all right for width on the cops you see, width didn't make much difference.
Yes. How did they grip on the spindle? Was the spindle sprung you know, did it have a spring on to grip them?
R – No, it just fit right on to the spindle tight
Just fit down onto the base.
(25 min)
R- Yes but they were a bit like, the old tubes, when you put them on, they’re all loose at the bottom, they don’t go exactly dead on at the bottom, but they are tight at the top. Up at the end of the spindle at the top, that's where they grip.
Aye, at the top.
R- You've just your half an inch grip at the top you see. And when your stuff winds on to your cop at the bottom, on to the paper tube then your weight's there, on to the bottom you see? And it's that half an inch at the top, or an inch, that's what grips your tube, you see.
Aye, that's where your grip is aye. And so you’d be spinning on paper tube there up till, well, up to when you finished.
R- Well, they did paper tubes all the time yes. And also they did them little Welsh hats we do at our place now.
Yes that’s it.
R – Them with a bit of a steel rim.
Yes, with the metal bottom that’s to clip into the shuttle. Now then, now's the time to get talking about something I’ve wanted to talk to you about for a long while. The thing that's always fascinated a lot of people about mule spinners and it fascinates me and all. It’s a fact that you used to work in bare feet didn’t you?
(650)
R - Oh yes, I worked in me bare feet all the twenty three years at Dunnockshaw.
Yes. Now did anybody else in the mill, any other process, work in their bare feet?
R- No, only the spinners.
Yes. Now why did spinners work in their bare feet?
R- Do you know, I don't know about that, I don't know where it originated from. All I know is when I started work, all the spinners used to work in their bare feet, and that were the common thing to do you see. And yet none of the card room, the floor were exactly the same in the card room as it were in the mules and yet fellows always wore shoes and slippers and anything like that. But spinners always worked in their bare feet. Unless there was something wrong with their feet and they had to wear shoes.
Yes, that’s it. What did you think about working in your bare feet?
R - Oh, I think it were great.
Great?
R - Yes.
How long did it take your feet to harden up?
R - I should say about six months 'cause they were sore at first with walking about with no stockings on or anything.
What were the floor?
R - It were, eh what were it? Do you mean the name of it?
No.
R- Oh it was just a wooden floor, like shiny.
Wood, yes?
R- Like a ballroom floor, right shiny it were. [Usually very good quality Maple boarding, same as they used for a sprung ballroom floor.]
Yes aye. How did you go on for splinters.
R- We didn't get any. It were all right smooth and polished. But if you went out, if you walked outside into another room where the floor were a bit rough, where you'd shove your bobbin trucks over… then you'd get them in and you had to get them out.
So how did you go on in the wheelgate when you were doffing? You wouldn't wheel your trucks in to the wheelgate then when you wore doffing would you?
R- We had tins for doffing in not boxes like we have at our place where you’ve trucks and that. We had waste tins as well.
So you'd carry them.
R- We used to have to fill them up and carry them out.
Aye. So there was no traffic on the floor to damage them?
R- No. All as we used to do were take a pile of tins in and then your cops were, we lifted the tins and walked out with them. All as were in the wheelgate were spinners and these tins on the floor and that were it.
(700)
Yes. Did you have a tin for waste in there?
R- Yes, the tin for waste was fastened on to mule itself.
So it moved with the mule?
R- It went with the mule did us waste tins. Not like we have now with them boxes, it were fastened on to the mule underneath the spindle lid, that box lid that comes down. It were under there.
Yes. That lid that comes down for access to the spindle bands.
R- And it were about, happen one foot six, sommat like that you know and it used to be fastened on to the mule and then all as we did were just throw your waste in as it were running. There were one on one side of the mule [headstock] and one on the other and then there were two on the other side where he was.[of the wheelgate]
Would you fill those in a day?
R- No. Not the way spinning were then. It were good spinning and there weren't so many ends come down, and it used to take you a couple of days to fill that.
Did you use to pick loose ends up off the floor with your toes?
R- Oh yes, all the time, never bent down to pick any waste up. I used to like roll it up with my feet into a ball and then pick it up. You never bent down for any. I could pick cops up with me foot and pick tubes up. Yes, it sounds funny really, you know, I could do it easy enough.
How hard were your feet? When I say how hard are your feet, I mean would you have difficulty in walking home? You know, over the roads?
R - Oh yes I could walk outside on to the main road with my feet, they were that hard. And the rails, you know the rails what the mule runs out on, I could walk on them flat-footed, walk on to them without hurting me feet or anything, never felt them. Really, really hard.
And would you say it was good for your feet that?
R - Yes, I think it was. I think it were healthy.
Healthy?
R- Yes very healthy. I don't think you sweat as much you know when you were free from socks and shoes, I think it were a lot cooler.
Yes that's it. Aye they reckon dogs do a lot of sweating through their feet, yes, through the pads of their feet. Not that I’m comparing you with dogs!
R- I think that's why I sweat a lot now in me head, through me forehead you know, with having shoes on.
Aye, I do that! Perhaps that’s why I ought to be in me bare feet aye. Aye, now another thing I want to ask you about, have you ever come across spinners cancer?
(750)
R- I have heard of it. I've never actually known anybody what has it but I think it's only, I don't know whether it were going or not then. Well it probably would have been but I don't think it were talked about then. I don't think anybody knew a lot about it then.
Aye they perhaps didn't know what were causing it.
R- They knew what were the cause of it. It's a funny name they had. Is it…
Scrotal cancer isn't it? Is it? Scrotal cancer aye.
R- Is that what it was called? Aye.
What it's with, the spindle’s revolving so fast they are always throwing a little bit of oil off aren't they you know?
R - They do.
And the thing was that, I mean we've been talking about… For instance we ware talking about you not wearing underpants until you went to work. Now in the old days of course, a lot of people never did wear underpants, and they used to wear the same trousers day after day.
R - All full of oil, full of oil.
... week after week after week, full of oil. And the thing were that it used to give them cancer of the scrotum and really the cure for it was to wear underpants and change them every day or two days, so that you weren’t going round in clothes that were soaked with oil. But for years and years I don't think this was really recognised. And I was just wondering whether you'd ever come across it and whether anybody ever told you to watch out £or it.
R - No, it were never mentioned when I were younger no.
Never mentioned? No that’s strange that you see because it was accepted as a real industrial hazard at one time by spinners.
R - But like same as you are talking about years ago when the old spinners were working. They actually did wear their overalls week after week after week, never took them home to be washed.
Yes. That’s it.
R You see and it did go on did that you see?
Aye, they were going round more or less soaked in oil.
R- Oh certainly they were.
Actually it was the oil itself, they changed the oil. A lot of oils had to be changed when they found out about that. Cutting oils as well you know, in the engineering works they had change because there were certain elements in them which were causing cancer.
R- Yes. That's right yes.
Ah well, nobody mentioned it to you anyway.
R- No.
How about accidents on the mules?
R - Oh yes we got, we got a lecture on what to do you know and what not to do when the mules are running. You know, keep away from your headstock when it's running, and don't clean it when it's running, don't have a brush or a rag and .. oh yes, we were drilled on that you know yes.
Yes, that's it. Now what were they running on at Ilex? On the engine?
(800)
R- At Dunnockshaw.
At Dunnockshaw sorry.
R- Yes it were, oh yes, it were run on an engine.
Yes. So you had overhead shafting in.
R- From the engine house, yes.
Yes. And what were it like running on an engine? Was it any different than running the way you do here? It wouldn’t be any different to the way you run now were it?
R - Well it were, yes. They used to have a lot of trouble with the engine, it kept knocking itself off kind of thing. It used to go right slow and used to knock off. It used to go right slow, then everything’d slow down and then your mules would stop. You might be lucky if it stopped and when it stopped it was on the roller beam. If it didn't, if it were half way out, it might have been half way going back in again. And then the bloke, the engineer, the firebeater would have to run up the steps and get it going again just before it stopped, you see? And that happened like pretty frequent did that. It kept knocking itself off did the engine, it were an old engine, it had been in a long while, years and years. Yes.
Aye. Now tell me sommat, it's something I’ve never seen and I don't want to see it. I don't think I do, but I’ve heard about it. What’s a sawney.
R- Oh yes a sawney. Yes, we have them regular, sawneys.
Did you?
R- Oh yes, have you not, you haven't seen one have you not?
I haven’t seen one, no, can you tell me what it is?
R - Well, it can be caused with anything really can a sawney, It's when all your ends break down, all the lot, right from the top to the other end, they all come down. It can happen when your twist motion puts double twist in, when your twist motion's going round and it knocks your lever off, the third speed on to the loose pulley and your mule's supposed to
(35 min)
change then but it will go round again will your twist and put it in, what they call double twist. And then it goes ‘whrrrrrr’ and keeps going round, it keeps sending your spindles round and round and round and round and it won't back off. They just keep going does your spindles until you like go down and stop it smartish, pull your rod off and stop it. And then all your ends all fly back and it pulls them all from under them leather rollers. All the lot straight off there yes. It's a grand sight to see when you see them all coming off! It is but not for us it isn’t you know, It’s bad for us, but to see it, yes it's great.
That’s what I say… I don't want to see it.
R- And then if your rim band, what's driving your mule, your rim band. If that's too slack, when it backs off it bounces and it'll come off the pulley. Then all your ends go down, all the lot, no twist in at all, right soft yarn and they all go down.
(850)
Aye.
R- But there’s lots of things can cause a sawney with your mule. Things can go wrong you know, a tooth breaks in the wheel or in your wheels things like that aye.
Yes. You surprised me there, you say you have them fairly often like.
R- Fairly often yes. Oh I know of one day when, when things are really going against you, you can have as many as oh, three, four, five in a day.
Oh God!
R - Oh yes we have had as many as three, one at back of the other, one straight after the other. Just pieced then all up, another draw, all down again. Oh yes it happens regular does them although you have never seen them when you've been in.
No.
R- But we don’t like them. I think they're terrible. Terrible things.
Anyway, well I should think not either. It's like having to take the warp out of a loom isn’t it. Terrible, aye. Where did they get the name, do you know, sawney?
R- I don't know. That were what we called it.
I don’t know where it came from. There’ll be a explanation for that somewhere Jim.
R - It'll be in a book somewhere, somebody'll have recorded it.
Aye. Yes wells that's sawneys and the cancer job and paste bottoms and bare feet. Anybody that came in and watched you spinning, I’m talking about people that had never seen spinning before - could perhaps be forgiven for thinking when they first saw it what a boring job spinning was. But what do you think about spinning?
R - Well I think it's an interesting job and I think you've got to be interested in it because all jobs are boring sometimes no matter what you're doing, it’s boring as a job. And you've really got to like the job, spinning, because you do a lot of walking about and you're doing the same thing all over again, a repetition, one after another. Still any job’s the same isn’t it, repetition, you're doing the same thing all over again. But that’s it, it does get boring and I think you've got to really like the job for to stick at it so long, so many years.
Would you say you've got to take an interest in it because ...
R- Oh yes, you certainly have, yes you've got to be interested in what you're doing.
Yes aye.
R- And you've got to be, try to put hundred per cent into it.
Yes that’s it.
R- Because if you don’t then you're going to make a mess for somebody else you know. The poor old weaver's going to get it in the neck if you don’t do your job right, you see.
Yes that’s interesting that because .. I mean that is one thing that's always struck me both in weaving sheds and in spinning .. you know, in textiles right the way through. People realise that how well they do their job influences how well and how easy it's going to be for the next person to do the job. Because as you say, if a spinner's not doing his job right or a taper or a twister or a winder or anything like that.
(900)(40 min)
R - Well it's the same in the card room. If they're making bad bobbins what they’re sending up to us then we catch it in the neck. It's going to be bad for us. Then we’ve got to sort it out then and try and make the best of what we get. But if there's any trouble comes from the weaving side, then they come up into the mule room you see because it's bad weft instead of going to the bottom where it started you see? And if they send good work up out of the card room then we get good work off them and then we could produce good work see and the weaver gets good weft.
Yes that's it.
R- But if there's any, if there's any bad weft straight to the spinners you see? So we've to make the best of a had job you see?
That’s it yes. Do you think that sometimes they perhaps ought to go to the man that’s buying the cotton?
R- Well I've I had, I argue that sometimes. When things are really getting bad, when everything's getting on top of me, spinning bad and you, we used to say “Well, whoever’s buying this bloody stuff, they want to get them out and get somebody in what knows what to buy” Because some of it, it's rubbish you know?
Aye that’s it.
R- Whether it's because it's cheap or not I don’t know. That’s not my side of it.
Aye, for the price.
R- That's not my side of it, you see it's up to them.
Yes. So you were at Oak Mill then until…
R- Nineteen sixty eight
1968, aye. So 24 years, it's like a fair do and you’d told me about that before, I'd forgotten about that, you know. Well 24 years is a long time at one place.
R - It's a long while at one place. Oh I settled there, I kind of liked it.
Yes. What were the name of the firm?
R- It were called the Goodshawfold Manufacturing Company.
That’s it aye.
R- And it were owned by a family of Howarths, well Howarth they were called, and they lived in Crawshawbooth. And there were a big family of them you know.
Did they just spin Jim? Did they do any weaving?
R - They were spinning and weaving. They were weaving as well as spinning, weaving and winding.
Aye.
R- The weaving place was Kippax Mill, Crawshawbooth, that was out of Crawshawbooth, you go down round what they call round the bottoms, it's near Brookside.
Yes.
R - And they had a big weaving shed there. It were a big firm were Goodshawfold Manufacturing ..
Did they do any spinning for sale?
R - Oh yes, a lot of mule weft then when we were running. We used to pack up a lot, put them in boxes and send them away, send them to Rochdale and Oldham, places like that. Oh yes they did a lot of sale weft. And they did a lot of rewinding, they didn't do a lot of spinning from the mule to the weaver, it all got rewound. See because a lot of time if your stuffs not just good enough they can make it better if you rewind it.
(950)
Yes that’s it.
R- On to a pirn for to go into the shuttle. Then they know it’s good stuff you see and won’t break.
That's it.
R - But if the stuff is not good enough, and you take it by cop to the weaver he might have a lot of break downs with it you see and that's why they rewound a lot I think. But our stuff what we're running at Spring Vale now, it's good stuff and it'll run straight through to the weaver, you see?
Yes, we used to run Spring Vale twist [at Bancroft], we used to run it straight on to the shuttle.
R- It’s a good spin is Spring Vale, yes.
Yes. No it were good stuff, we used to put it straight on the shuttles. That eights condenser we used to get off them on the green tube. We used to put it on and run it straight through the shuttle. So they've finished there anyway at Oak Mill and you’d be out of work and looking for a job again.
R - I were made redundant yes, but I had a job to go too when I got made redundant.
Where was that?
R- I went to Waterside.
Oh aye, just at the side of Spring Vale.
R- Side of Spring Vale, yes. I just did three days there, that was shift work.
Yes. Spinning?
R - Spinning yes. And it were really rough, terrible.
In what way?
R- Ends breaking down and oh, shocking. They used to have a night shift work there, Pakistanis working nights making bobbins for the spinners and they were terrible. Keep ripping them out, a lot of ends missing on them. Oh It were horrible. So I said like that’s me finished, I’m not sticking this, so I went. And I went to Ilex and got a job at Ilex which were shift work.
Yes. Now was that still slipper making at Ilex?
R – No. It's spinning now in Ilex.
Yes. So they've gone from slippers to spinning.
R- Slippers to spinning. And I did three and a half years there at Ilex spinning.
Yes. What were it like there?
R- It were all right at first, for the first couple of years, spinning were right good and then trade went off again you know and then shift work upsets your social life.
Aye. Were you on shift work at Ilex?
R- Yes.
Which shifts were those Jim?
R - Six till two and two while ten. There were just two shifts.
That's it.
R- But same as I had worked 23 years just on days you know, at Oak Mill. Then to go on shift work and get up at five o'clock in the morning, it's a wrench you know. It upsets your routine of your meals and when I were coming home at quarter past ten at night, me wife was ready to go to bed at eleven o'clock. I didn't want to go to bed, I used to be reading while one o’clock at morning and then go to bed then probably disturb her then you see. Now when I were on earlies I were getting up at five,
(1000)
disturbing her again at five. Coming home at two o'clock I were ready for going to bed, I were tired. And at night I used to go to bed at half past nine. So it's just, it upsets things and your meal times as well.
SCG/11 July 2003
8,177 words.
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 79/SD/05
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON AUGUST 15TH 1979 AT 26 HARGREAVES DRIVE, RAWTENSTALL. THE INFORMANT IS JIM RILEY, MULE SPINNER AT SPRING VALE MILL. THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Right Jim. So you were down at Ilex and were you spinning about the same counts at Ilex?
R – Yes. I think they were the same counts, sevens, they were sevens, yes I think they wore all sevens and they were all for rewinding.
Was that sale weft?
R – No. I don't think they did sale weft at Ilex, it all went to be rewound and it went to Longholme Shed to be woven at the weaving shed there.
And then from Ilex then, what made you go from Ilex to Whitakers then?
R- Well, I had had enough with shift work.
Aye that's it, yes.
R- You see that’s what did me. I did three and a half years and it were long enough you know?
Yes. So Whitaker’s have never been on shift work?
R - Never done shift work, Whitakers. They had talked about going on shift work, but it never materialised you know.
Good job. Anyway, so you went to Whitaker's where you are now then. And when you went to Whitaker's did you go as a mule spinner?
(50)
R- Oh yes. But when I went to Whitaker's I didn't go to Spring Vale where I am now, I went to Grane Road, Holme Spring. They had five pairs of mules in there and I went on a pair in there with my brother Andy and then of course they broke them up, they took them out and then they moved us over to Spring Vale.
Yes. Now, I should have asked you, when you were at Holme Mill, what sort of mule were you using? Whose mules were you on there?
R- Taylor Lang’s.
Taylor Lang.
R- Taylor Lang’s, just the same ones I am on now.
Yes. What were they at Ilex?
Taylor Lang.
Ah. So they were fairly popular round here.
R- Well, they were popular yes. There were what they call Asa Lees mules, them’s more complicated, but there were very few of them. I think we just had one side at Dunnockshaw, not one pair, one side in.
Yes
R- But Whitakers hadn’t any of them in.
Were there any advantages with those mules?
R - These Asa Lees? Well, they made a better cop, you know. They said they were easier to gait up when you doffed and things like that but I never ran them you know so I don’t know anything about them really.
Yes. So really you have been on the same sort of mules all your working life.
R - Taylor Lang all my life.
So you’ll know then mules inside out by now?
R - More or less.
(100)
Aye. What do you mean, more or less! You do well to laugh! [Jim laughs] Aye. Anyway, that’s it, we have got you across to Whitakers, you are spinning there at Whitakers, you have come across there and they have moved you into Spring Vale. Now, how do you like Spring Vale for working in, you know. Is spinning there all right?
R- Oh yes, it's comfortable, it's grand. Yes, it's a nice place to work at in Spring Vale. Everybody gets on with everybody else you know. It’s smashing you know? I think that's half the battle, if you get on with them what’s working with you.
Yes, I was going to ask you about that actually. What is it that makes the difference when you are working, what is it that makes the difference between a good shop to work at and a bad shop to work at?
R- Well, that’s it. It's the people what works round you and if you get a good mate to work with on the mules, a good partner, that’s half the battle.
I thought that watching you many a time, it must be a beggar if you are on with somebody you can’t get on with.
R - Oh I have been on with a few.
Have you?
R - Oh yes, I have, do you know, you can fall out with ‘em just that easy, you know? If you don’t get on with somebody, then you’re better off splitting up.
Aye,
R - You know, if you go down to the office and tell the boss as you have been falling out and things are not going right, “Could I have a move?” And then they like sort something out for you you know. But you've both got to go you know? It’s no good one going down and saying “I can’t work with him.” You have got to both go down and say, you know, as we can’t hit it off. Do you know?
So there's got to be a certain amount of common sense and agreement between you before that can happen.
R – Yes.
(150)
Have you ever been in a position, working with another spinner on a set of mules, where they haven’t even got the common sense to do that?
R - Oh yes.
So what happens then?
R - Well I went down in the office and told them like I weren’t working with this bloke you know. And they said “What’s wrong?” So I could tell them what were to do. I told them I couldn't get on and kept falling out, and so he says “Right, we’ll try and sort sommat out.” And I came back and they sent for my partner to go down, and they wanted to know his side of the story. Instead of getting us both down and thrashing it out there and then you see but each one of us told his own story. I don’t know what he had said and he didn't know what I had said. It went on for a bit you know before eventually we did like split off you know. But it meant unsettling somebody else on some other mule, that's what happens. You see everybody else has settled with their own partner, then you have to try to sort yourselves out there and then on that pair, or else try and disturb somebody else you see. Which they probably don’t want to split up you see?
Yes, that’s it.
R- That your mate's on your other pair.
That’s it, aye.
R- And it’s all rather difficult, you know.
What way can you make it difficult for each other or better for each other when you work.
R- Oh, lots of ways, a lot of ways. I mean, the same as them bobbins what we are putting in, them big bobbins at top we put one in and your empty one out. Well when you are working together you have to help one another to do that. That photograph you took of me and Tommy putting bobbins in together? That’s what happens all day.
Aye, creeling, aye.
R – Creeling, you have to go and help one another because you are on piece work, you've to keep them mules going to get your weight off to make your wage.
That's it aye..
R - Then if you don’t work together, if one's pulling against the other you stop on your own half and you don’t go over and then he has to do it all himself, and it's taking him a bit longer.
(200)
Yes. He’s got more down time.
R – He’s got more .. yes. Then you start bickering at one another and same with doffing off. If you doffed all your cops off before him and he has some left on, normally you go down and help him to take them off for him and he is doing sommat on this other mule on the back of it. But if you are falling out with one another you don’t go down You see, job's stopped. That’s a waste of time.
Yea. And of course you are working as a pair, your weight's calculated on the pair of mules, not just calculated yours on one side and his on the other, yes?
R - Wage is split fifty fifty. If you are working hard and he in not working hard, he is getting half the wage the same as you are getting half, but you are working twice as hard for your money you see? And that’s what it boils down to. And he is not pulling his weight and you are doing your share.
Tell me sommat Jim, is that a good way of working, do you like that way of working?
R - What, working together?
Yes.
R- Oh yes certainly. Oh yes, it makes you happy at your work. You are a lot more contented working together.
Yes. Like, you'd rather have it like that than paddle your own canoe?
R - Oh yes. Because you might get so you are working on your half and your half might be a little bit shorter, like same as a couple of bobbins shorter on your half than your mate’s half. He might be a little bit longer you see and he’ll have more pirns to take off and vice versa. And so you go down and help him out. But if you're stuck on your own half and took your own off, then you'd be waiting for him taking them off you see, and it takes a lot longer. Yes, it's not the same when you look after your own half.
That’s it.
(250)
R - And then again, you might be a better spinner than he is you see. He might not be as quick as you are. You see there's a lot of things balanced against it you know but if you are working together, then one makes up for another.
Well that’s what life's all about isn't it, working together?
R- Well it is yes. You might be quicker putting a bobbin in, but your mate might be quicker at taking cops off you see, so it evens itself up.
Yes. And as long as he is pulling, as long as he is a worker…
R - As long an he is pulling the same as you are pulling, then you're both getting fifty fifty, you are dividing your wage, when you are satisfied at the end of the week you know if you have earned it.
Aye, that's good is that.
R- But if he is not pulling his weight, and he is getting half of the wage and you know damn well he hasn't earned it, and like you know you are getting the thick end of the wedge you know?
Yes. I have watched the way you and Tommy work together and I must say I have been impressed by the fact that there is no shilly shallying about. The thing that's impressed me is that there’s been odd times, say when you have been creeling and just for arguments sake, Tommy has had a bad bobbin in or sommat, there’s been one or two ends going down at the other side and he's got to stop there to keep them ends up, I've never once seen you look over your shoulder as if to say “Where the hell is he?” Because you know don’t you?
R- Well, I know what he is doing, I know he is because I have seen that bobbin, I have seen them ends come down you see. And I just know what he is doing.
Yes. And you know that if he wasn’t doing that he’d be with you. You know he’d be there.
(10 min)(300)
R- Yes. But when you work together that long you just know what one another is doing if you work together properly. And yet some of them spinners what work there at our place they haven’t been brought up like that, they have been brought up to look after their own half, you see.
Aye, yes.
R- They’ll go and help one another with bobbins like we do but they don't rush about the same, they just take their time and look after their own half. They don’t bother about his mate on the other side and they just carry on all day like that.
Yes. One other thing that struck me, which in one of the reasons why I did the pictures of you and Tommy, is that what I don't know about mule spinning would fill large volumes and I am doing my best to find out. But it struck me when I went in there that, I am used to going and looking at people working, and I am used to weighing things up - and it seemed to me that you had been getting as much weight off your mules as anybody else there. Would that be about right?
R- We had to, we were about top weight us yes for them type of mules as we're on.
That's it yes. I went for the way you're working. It impressed me the way you and Tommy work together. Anyway, now, before we start I don’t want you getting your head so big you can't go through the door.
R - Oh it’ll come off will that door, I can pull it off.
Oh, will the door come off? Oh that’s all right. Hold on. Now then, just as you and Tommy have to work together, everybody else has to work together. Now, in that room with you where you're working there are two sets of mules so there are four spinners, two pairs of spinners and also there are other people working in that room all the time. Now you tell me who they are. You know, you have other people in the room.
R- Yes, the other two spinners are Tommy and Keith. We have one tuber.
Yes. Now is a tuber the same an they used to call a doffer? I’ve heard them calling them doffers you know in the old days.
R – No, a tuber isn't a doffer, no.
Now you tell me this, you tell me what the system is.
R- Well a tuber just sorts tubes out, puts them in boxes and puts them on your mule, but a doffer, I think that's in fine spinning I think is a doffer. It's not in shoddy.
Yes. I’ll tell you where they did use to have doffers, they used to have them in the old days, they used to have them on ring spinning, and they were usually children.
R- Yes. I have heard of that, children doing it.
Yes, that spinner would have had so many doffers. Now in the old days on mule spinning, on fine spinning they used to have piecers and all.
(350)
Didn’t they? Do you know about that, they used to have piecers who did nothing else, well you started off as one, that way didn't you?
R - Well that’s how I originally started of as, a piecer.
Yes, doing nothing but piece. Yes well, like being a labourer.
R- Yes. And we used to get paid us wages off the spinners.
Yes, now that’s something I meant to ask you.
R – Yes well our wage didn't come out of the office. It was paid by the spinners. And the harder you worked and the more wage you got.
Good lad Jim. I’d forgotten that.
R- Now the spinners wages was paid out of the office. With the weight they got off, the more weight and the harder you worked, the more weight the spinners got off they used to pay you out of their wage.
That’s it. The name of the game was keeping them mules running.
R- Keeping them mules going you see. Until eventually it got scrapped did that and then they started paying them [the piecers] out of the office. I don’t know how it came about but that’s what happened you know.
Yes, and then of course they quietly started to do away with piecers.
R- They did yes, you had to run the pair on your own, two spinners which were damned hard work, 1400 spindles I had it on my own and it were hard work to do all the doffing and tubing yourself. But when you have a piecer and a good piecer then you know you could get them on quick and you’re away.
Yes. Aye that’s it.
R- Aye you could earn a good wage if you had a good piecer on. And we used to, I’ll tell you what we used to do, and all the spinners in my room. They used to pay the piecer happen about half a crown extra every week to try and get more weight off than the next pair. They used to say "”Right, we’ll set off at Monday, we'll see if we can get so much weight off this week. We'll see if we can beat that next pair. Now then, if we get it off, we'll give you an extra half a crown.”
Aye.
R- Well, next pair would have a piecer on. They'd say “Right, we'll try and beat you then!” They'd try you see and beat us. It were like a competition more or less.
Yes that’s it aye.
R- But you know, it all added to the day passing on quick and what have you. You know it were some interest. [A similar thing used to go on in the weaving shed, especially when they were running on pick clocks. Weavers would compete with each other to see who could get the most picks in.]
(400)(15 min)
Aye of course it did, yes. Now in circumstances like that, I mean we are talking about Goodshawfold Manufacturing now, I can't get down there, running on the engine. When the engine started up in the morning, as soon as ever that shafting got so that it was going at the right speed that mule'd be in gear, I know.
R- Yes. Well, because everybody were there beforehand and oiled up and they were stood there at the mule you see, they used to be waiting for it turning. And as soon as it gathered up speed, then the rods were in. But they had to he careful an all, the mules haven’t to start at once.
That’s it aye.
R- You see you got them all coming on to the back, and the weight all on to the driving belt then your engine would go down. So you had to set on one mule at a time you see until it got going. But if everybody set on at once that were it, your engine used to go down, you know. Because there's a lot of weight in mules and when they all come up the back and they are driving all together, some weight on.
[There were many advantages in running on the engine in terms of timekeeping and prompt starting but what Jim is describing is a circumstance which didn’t occur in weaving sheds because the individual units were small. With large machines like mules you had to let the governor have enough time to open the steam valves on the engine to keep the speed up. In a workshop on day wages driven by one engine it was a common trick to throw all the machines in gear at the same time thus stopping the engine and gaining a bit of leisure time off the employer. In the spinning mill on piece rates it was not in the workers interests.]
Yes. That’s it aye. When you say they come on to the back, you mean when they are right back and ...
R- Aye, they are right out on the back on the stops.
And spinning, yes.
R- Yes well, that’s put all the twist in has that when it gets on the back, and it comes on to your stop at the back, before it backs off and goes in again. Your twist's already in, it's gone in then, it's ready for backing off and going on to the cop then.
Yes, that’s it aye. Aye it's spinning as it's coming back isn't it, it's put its twist in and it's coming back.
R – It’s put its twist in and it's coming out.
Yes, as it's coming out. Aye that's it.
R- As it start from the rollers it starts putting twist in but about a quarter of the way out it changes does your twist strap. There's a first speed, it starts on your loose pulley, it comes on to your first speed then on to your second speed then back on to your loose pulley. But when it came on to the first speed, then it's not putting much twist in it's soft. But as soon as ever it goes over on to the third speed then you have got your drive then, it's driving it full belt then, it's putting it in then.
Yes that’s it. Now, you can see that when they are running, you can hear it anyway can't you?
R- Yes you can hear it and you can see the stuff when the sun in shining, you know, flying off the spindle, aye it is. And then it’s put it in then and then when it’s backed off it starts putting on to your cop then.
(450)
Yes that’s it. Right now, let's start off, let's, we'll just go through a day's work then. Now you get there in the morning. Your mule'll be like any other piece of machinery there are things that you’ll have to do for that mule before you start going in the morning if you are going to do a good job. How about oiling the mule?
R – Well, tonight when I came out we set a mule up, what you call set a mule up for doff. Now that’ll have to be done in the morning, I shall be there at seven o'clock in the morning. I should take then all off, my mate Tommy, he’ll be there at a quarter to seven, he is there every morning at a quarter to seven. Now we'll take all the cops off, put all the pirns on and press them all down, set the motor on and run it in so that’s done for about ten past seven. Now then I’ll get all my oilers all in a line for oiling up. You see they all run up like on a shaft, you see you put them, all your oils together, loose pulley, driving pulley, they have all got holes in for oiling. Put them all in a line and then your oil runs down through the holes, down the shaft see, and you won’t get any seizing up or owt like that. And that’s to be done every morning and yet some spinners don’t, they don't bother with it you see, they don’t oil up. But that, to me, should be done every morning. Oil your loose pulleys, ‘cause if you don’t then they get red hot and start scriking [dialect for crying or screaming] or whatever. But that's to be done every morning, oil the spindles where the pirns fit, that’s to be done every morning but yet a lot of spinners don't touch them. But if you are going to be, if you are a proper spinner and been taught the proper way then you’ll do all them things automatically you see?
Yes you do, yes.
(20 min)(475)
R - Which I do every morning.
Yes. Just the same as running the engine. Now go on.
R- Yes. Now then, we oil up then ready for starting. So push those rods on which is electric now, with the motor, then we get going.
What time do you reckon to start at, half past seven?
R- We start at half past seven, yes, dead on. And we are both ready at the mules, ready for setting on, And away we go.
In that room, is it the same motor that drives both.
R - It's one big motor what drives both pair.
Yes, both pair.
R – Yes, they are both driven by belts, driving belts, now.
Yes, that's it, off the shafting yes.
R- Shafting, yes.
(500)
And once you have set on, I mean it’s the process which we are going to describe with the photographs. It’s the process of spinning right the way through the day.
R – Yes, spinning, and tenting and what have you.
You don't have any breakfast time, now, do you?
R - We have a, no, we have a lunch. Have a lunch, me and Tom have a lunch about eight o’clock, we brew up and have a couple of sandwiches.
Yes. Do you stop the mules?
R- No, we eat with it running all the time, we don’t have a break.
That’s it. And then of course you stop at dinner time.
R- We stop at twelve o'clock then.
Yes, till one?
R - Until five to one. And then we run on then, and instead of stopping at half past four we stop at twenty five past four. That came into force through bus times you see, to go and catch certain buses. So that we set on at five to one instead of one and finish at twenty five past four. So you are still working all your hours you know.
Yes. And how often, one of the things that a lot of people can’t understand nowadays, I mean if anybody looks at the dates on those mules, I think those of yours are 1903 aren’t they? Them mules of yours? I think the date on those …
R- Yes, they're, one of mine, one of my mules is 1901 and the other's 1903. So I don't know whether they are actually the proper plates what’s on you know, but them’s the two dates on our pair.
Yes that’s it. Anyway, let's put it this way, those frames are nearly eighty years old.
R- Well yes they are.
Now of course the thing is that nowadays a piece of machinery is something that wears out every five years isn’t it. So do you ever run into any problems with the fact that they are old machines? You know, it is old machinery.
R- Yes there is a lot of problems, but this is solved by what does break they get them welded you see. There are only certain places where they break but they have a lot of spares, from what they bought when other factories have shut down. They’ve bought the mules and stored them away you see and the major break downs, which is your pulleys, your rim pulley or carriage pulley, if them break then you have to take all your stock out and replace it with another one which they have plenty of spares for you see.
I think if I remember rightly have I seen a spare drive shaft hung at the back of your mule?
R- Yes. Well, that's not a drive shaft, that's a scroll shaft. It’s what your scroll ropes go on. That's at the back of the mule is that. Now that’s hung up at the back, but that’s only hung up there to stretch them ropes you see?
Aye, I see. Those are new.
R- They are new ropes what want stretching so he's got that scroll, the heavy scroll and hung it up on to the ropes just to stretch them. It's got to stretch.
Aye, quietly stretch them.
R- But once over you know, once of a day, new ropes used to be stretched tight between them columns in between the mules. Rim band ropes or owt like that, we used to pull them round, right tight, so as you could stretch them, and you used to leave them there for a fortnight or three weeks, and just leave them to stretch them.
Yes. Well, up on the top floor, during the Spring holidays this year they put some new ropes on the electric motor. Kenyons came from Ashton. And they stretched those ropes with a block and tackle between the cast iron pillars. And they did give them some stick. They did give then some stick, they put some stretch into them, they took some of the stretch out of them rather before they spliced them.
R- Yes. That’s right yes.
And they used to do that when they did the ropes on the engine at Bancroft. When I was at Bancroft we used to stretch them. But how often do you get like as a rim band do you call them don’t you, or a carriage rope, how often do you get one of them breaking?
R - Well a rim band, oh you can have a rim band on for I bet two years, well over two years a good one. It might want piecing, it might just start fraying and you piece it. When you put a new rim band on at first it stretches a heck of a lot you see? You keep tightening it up and it keeps stretching and stretching and he has to keep coming back and piecing it. And every time he takes that rim band off to piece it he lets that rim band wheel in, to the full stretch you see. And he puts the rope on and then as it's running again and it's stretching a bit more you have to tighten it a bit more. Now it gets to a certain point where it doesn't stretch no more, and that’s right then. And it might last you two years, it might last you three.
Yes. When you say piece it up, that's splicing it?
R - That's splicing it.
(600)(25 min)
And who splices it?
R- The overlooker does that.
And have you ever had one break on you?
R- Oh yes, it’ll just snap and then you have a sawney.
And then you have a sawney.
R - I told you didn’t I, that were it then. You have a sawney,
That’s it aye. And then overlooker, we have a picture of the overlooker in the book.
R - He came in then.
He comes in and…
R - He splices it yes.
He splices it up. Have you ever been at a place where the spinners have spliced their own ropes?
R- I have been to Rhodes and Sons Limited in Crawshawbooth. They had an overlooker there what just did major breakdowns, that were your headstock. But you had to do your own ropes, and piece your own straps. You know, your twist strap, your carriage strap would break. All them like, he didn’t do them. And you had to joint them all yourself. But all the places I have been to apart from that they have had overlookers so I've never had to do them you see?
That’s it aye. Because you knows like reckoning up what the stretch is in ropes and splicing them and putting them on… It’s all right, but I used to have to splice a few for the lubricators and what not but it's a job on its own is spicing ropes.
R- Yes, I think it is yes. I means everybody can't do it, it's a thing as you have to learn over the years you know and pick it up…
I like watching splicers working.
R- Yes, I do.
That lad that did them ropes up in the top room, he came and did some ropes on my engine for me over at Bancroft and by God he is good. And, you know you can watch him do it and then you can try and do it yourself you know. And it flies into place when he is doing it. And when he's finished if he wants to he can hide all the ends and when you have rubbed some graphite and tallow over it, you can’t tell where the joint is.
R - No. Oh you can whenever our overlooker does it, there's a lot of loose ends on aye.
Well he [Kenyon’s man] leaves a fair bit of loose, because he says that splices last longer if there in a bit of loose on them.
R Yes, that’s right yes.
He said because that end, he said that if you leave it under the other, he said it won’t be long before it works its way around and pops out from the other side. So he says you are better off leaving a bit loose because I played hell with him once. I said “What have you left all them ends hanging out for?” Do you know, they were stuck out about half an inch. He says “Oh, the splice’ll last longer like that.” One of the things, I don’t think it’ll apply so much on mules, but one of the things that we used to find on engines were that if you could get a rope rolling when it was working [it lasted longer] But a lot of your ropes on the mules as far as I can see, are fastened at both ends aren't they? You know, they are fastened, they are fastened ...
(650)
R- They are fast, they are fastened, they are knotted at both ends. They are knotted on your scroll shaft at the back and they are also knotted on your framework at the front.
That’s it, aye.
R - You see. And they go down, they go round on your worm at the back end.
That’s it aye. So you don’t just get the same thing, but we used to get, we always used to say that ropes lasted longer if they started rolling.
R- Yes, I know what you mean.
You know, instead of staying in the same place, if they started rolling, so as they got polished all over. But of course, that doesn't apply to mules because…
R – No it doesn’t.
Now tell me sommat, just out of curiosity. Have you ever read that book on mules, Catlow's book 'The Spinning Mule’.
R - No.
I'll get hold of a copy for you, I think it’ll interest you. I’ll get hold of a copy for you. It's the standard book an the spinning mule, it's a great book, I'll get hold of a copy of that for you, that’s a promise. Next time I am up at Lancaster, I know they have it there, I'll get it.
R – Well, you know my address, you can send it me here, you know?
I’ll call in, what are you talking about? Now, what I was going to say there, wait a minute, I was going on about that book. Yes, now which do you get paid most for, if you are on a finer count do you get paid more for your eights?
R- Oh yes. You see there's different rates of pay but there’s only two really. You get paid a bit extra for fives, that’s a thicker, coarser count so you're doing a lot more doffing.
Yes that’s it.
R- Your doffing's coming up a lot quicker than when you are on sevens because it's a thicker count, a lot coarser and then they are only taking about three quarters of an hour to doff. So then you are doing more doffing, so you get that little bit extra for the work as you are doing.
So how about, I would have thought it would have been the other way around that the finer the count the more you would have got paid for your weight, because it’d take more spinning like won’t it.
R- Yes I know, but when I used to work at Dunnockshaw, we used to run nines and then it took at least two hours for your cop to fill up which is a lot of running time on a mule. But on fives, at three quarters of an hour that mule’s stopped again you see. It's only running three quarters of an hour and it's stopped, you have to doff off again in another three quarters of an hour. But if your mule's running two hours you are only doing two doffs in the morning.
You see, what I am getting at though, if you were getting paid on weight, the more often you doff, the more weight you are getting off so the more money you'd be getting anyway.
(700)(30 min)
R - Ah but you are not, not off the clock.
I see, you are paid on the clock?
R - You are, we are paid off the clock. As long an them mules'll keep running your clock's going round, then you are getting paid. But you know… Years ago we used to get paid by the weight of the cop.
Ah, now, I thought you were still paid that way.
R - Oh no, when you were, we used to doff into them tins then and you used to put it on the scale then and weigh it.
Yes
R- They’d take the weight of the tin off you know.
The tare of the tin, they'd weigh the amount of cops you had in.
R - Then you got paid off that then.
Where's the clock on the mule, then?
R – It’s underneath. It runs off your back shaft.
Now. Well. I have got to have a picture of that.
R - You, well, it's the clock underneath and it's that’s what you call a hankage clock, you see. And it goes right slow and it doesn't move for, I think, I am not sure whether it’s about sixty draws your mule has to do before it moves a little bit. It doesn't move like an ordinary thing on it.
No. It’s like a pick clock, it's like pick clock how it moves.
R – Yes. It has to do so many draws before it moves you see?
That's it yes.
R - And then you reckon it up
So in actual fact you are paid very much like a weaver. You are paid …
R - Just the same.
You are paid on the clock.
R – Yes well, they have clocks on the looms haven't they?
Yes, but instead of being picks it's draws.
R - It's draws, it's what they call, they're Hankage draws. But you can’t see the clock, it's underneath, and it's run off your back shaft which is going round when your mule's coming out and going in you see? That back shaft's going all the time, round and round.
Aye. I bet a pound that clock's made by Orme’s at Oldham because they are the ones that make pick clocks and all. I have one. Next time I come down you must show me that, we’ll have to have a look at that.
R- Yes. It's right against the headstock, you can see it, you can reach over, you can look at it.
Well, we'll get in to have a look at it. We'll have to have a picture of that for the back of the book, aye.
R- Yes, the clock. But they have some, Arnold has some in the cabin what's not on the mule. It’s just an ordinary clock you know?
Yes. Ah well, that’s explained that to me then because I couldn’t understand why you got paid a better rate, you know, for taking less weight off ... because really the thicker you, the thicker you were on…
R - The thicker your count, the more weight.
Now, how thick do you go up to? What's the thickest you have ever spun?
R - Fours.
Fours. That is getting thick isn’t it?
R - They are the thickest, fours. They run fours at our place. That mule like next to ours what Tommy is on, they were on fours, they are on fours now, they’re running fours now yes.
(750)
Aye. Yes, are they putting it on tube?
R – It’s on welsh hat, on metal pirn.
Oh well, Metal pirns.
R - It's going straight to the weaver.
Aye. Now that’s the thing about the stuff that you are spinning there, that's something I didn't realise, it was done, it's going straight on to Northrop pirn to go down to the looms.
R- To go down to the loom, it’s going straight to the loom, it’s not being rewound.
So that's got to be good spinning.
R - Oh yes. It’s got to be first class has that. You can get away with it if you're rewinding it because the rewinder, if there's going to be any breaks, they take them out. He's has had his breaks, they take them out you see. They can rectify it.
That’s it aye. Of course that's one of the things about rewound weft. That was when rewound weft came in, when they went on to more looms because they had to do something to make it better for the weavers to keep the weavers going. And that was where rewound weft come in. In fact at Bancroft we not only used to rewind it on to the pirn, we used to wind it from ring tube on to cone.
R – Yes.
And then from cone on to pirn because that way you give the winder a better chance of getting a lot of weight off, and it also made sure that that yarn was all right before it got to the winder even.
R – Yes. They do it at Grane Road now. The cones come in, well they call them cheeses.
Aye, cheeses and cones aye.
R - Cheeses or cones, I don’t know.
The same thing.
R- Now then, they come in and they rewind it off the cone on to metal pirn for to go into the weaving shed.
Yes, that’s it.
R- But they are a lot finer counts, they're tens and twelves, things like that, right fine stuff.
Yes. You see that's another thing that strikes me round here you see. You refer to tens and twelves as being fine counts. Well in Barlick we talk about 44s and 60s as being fine and I have seen mule twist that was spun commercially at one time, it was regularly spun in Oldham, that was 400's count. Now, when you think about that, you know, like it used to take a fortnight between doffs. I know the fellow that showed it me was at Burnley Technical College and he said it used to take them a fortnight to doff, It took a fortnight before they could doff. Just imagine that!
R - Grand,
Fortnight. And next time I come down I’ll bring you one. I had hold of them today and I meant to bring you one. I'll bring you one of them cops, it’s Egyptian twist, it's mule twist, it's 44's on paper bottom. And, you can just take that down, just show em it, just show ‘em and say he was just telling me this is some right twist.
R - Have they, has somebody shown you how to tell how much twist there is in your stuff, off a cop? You just get hold of your cop and you pull your end off like that, and then you put them together like that. Then when your end hangs down, and it twists round.
No. You’ll have to show me that.
(800)
R- That's your test that to see the strength of your stuff, you see? And it'll curl round, it’ll twist round will your stuff. If you haven't enough twist in it then it'll only do a lazy turn. But if you pull it apart and like it goes so, then your stuff is strong enough. They did have this for the workers regular, come and test it. Roy Tomlinson the manager, he comes in sometimes, and he'll get a cop and he’ll go ... and then he'll go .. and then he’ll twist it and then he’ll go away then, and it it's not as it should be he'll go to Arnold, the overlooker. Then he’ll go and test it, you now, on a testing machine, they’ve a machine for testing it.
Aye, that's it, yes.
R – It’s a wheel. Put the cop on, you wind it and the thing that goes round, certain pressure. Then when the yarn breaks it's stopped at that number, you see?
Aye. But it's like Jim Pollard, our weaving manager, I think you'd enjoy talking to Jim. It’s like he says, that tensile strength means nothing on its own.
R- Oh no.
Because, that's one of the things, we had many a laugh about Johnsons at Earby. They have got a lot of technical men on, and the only thing that's being tested for is tensile strength. They are buying yarn on tensile strength. If it's got a good tensile strength they say it’s good yarn. But I never realised it were possible, but Jim’s pointed it out to me, that it's possible to have lousy yarn that's right strong.
R- Yes. I know it is, yes.
But he says that doesn't mean to say it’s going to weave right.
R- No, but it probably gives you a false impression does that.
Aye, he says it’s nowt to do with how it's going to weave. And he goes lyrical about yarn does Jim. He’ll take some, you know, and tease it apart and look at it, and tell you what’s in it. Well, in fact, Jim is an amazing bloke, I've seen him with little samples of cloth that people have sent to see whether we could weave it and they've sent it to Courtaulds for testing and they have sent it back and said the sample's too small, they can’t do it. And Jim has set to, in a corner of the office with a pin stuck in the end of a bit of wood and a magnifying glass and he’s pulled it to bits, and he has told them just what the construction of it is and measured it up and told them what it is and we have gone and woven it and it's been all right. Which is the difference between somebody that knows and somebody that doesn’t you see. But you see, he is like you, he spent 40 years in the business, he knows it inside out. He knows every bloody trick. And God he could tell good yarn.
R – It’s all that what you learn over the years, it’s experience.
That's it, yes. But we never had any bother with Whitaker’s yarn, we never had any trouble with their yarn, no trouble at all.
R - Oh it's good. It’s good stuff.
And yet some of them, oh I’ve seen then sending weft back by the skipful. And I have seen them sending stuff back where you couldn't wind it, we couldn't even wind it off cheeses, it wouldn’t even wind off cheeses, we had slubs coming through and soft shops you know, it weren't spun, it just weren't spun. It’s just rubbish, that’s all it is.
(850)(40 min)
R – No. It's rubbish. Rubbish.
And I mean you know yourself, it’s got to be right if you are going to weave good cloth it's got to be right. And some of the cloth what we wove at Bancroft was very good cloth. I'm not sure what that were, I think it went for raising that stuff that we used yours for, but it went in, it was eights condenser and it went in. I think it were about a 20s or 30s warp. I know, I tell you what it were good for, it were good for dish cloths, it didn't half soak up.
R - They make dish cloths at our place, well at Flash. All the bad weft what we take out, bad cops, we send them down to be rewound and then into cheeses and then they send them over to the Flash and they make mop rags out of them, you know?
Aye that's it aye. Best thing they could do with them and all. Anyway thank you very much again and I’ll stop this now and then we’ll have a couple of tapes on the pictures. All right Jim?
SCG/12 July 2003
8,073 words.
