TAPE 79/AD/01
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 2ND JULY 1979 AT 16 COWGILL STREET, EARBY. THE INFORMANT IS HORACE THORNTON, TAPER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
[One unexpected problem that I hit when doing the interviews was that due to time pressures it wasn’t possible to complete all of them before the mill finished. Ideally, the section on taping should have been done with Joe Nutter, he was the remaining taper after Norman Grey finished early. This problem was made worse by the fact that due to the structure of weaving out, the tapers were the first to finish. The impact of closure, understandably, made some people very bitter and Joe refused to talk about his job or comment on the pictures.
Fred Inman, one of my tacklers, suggested I talk to Horace Thornton and I think you might agree with me that things could have been worse. He was a wonderful informant and the number of tapes in this series bears testimony to the way he gave me full access to his experience. I don’t see how we could have done any better.]
[July 2007. One of the constant problems I have when I go back to these interviews which I did thirty years ago is that despite trying to cover all the bases I always find gaps where I forgot to ask the question. Horace is no exception but fate and the power of the press stepped in last week to rescue me…..
I got a telephone call from a lady called Catherine Rushton who lives near Doncaster who had visited the area recently. Whilst here she saw a copy of the BET and to her surprise found an article on her father! She knew that I had spent the time with Horace because he’d talked to her about it but apart from that knew nothing about what had happened to the work. Of course, I shall make sure she gets to see the articles as I write them and I have sent her a CD with all her father’s transcripts on it and I’m delighted that she took the trouble because apart from doing this, I got the chance to fill in a few gaps. Catherine says that if I find any more I can give her a shout.
Here are the fillers for our wall…. Horace’s wife was Gertrude Spencer and she was born in Colne. Her father was William Spencer, a locomotive driver on the railway. Horace’s mother was Millicent Whiteoak and the connection with the Bradford paper was that Edwin, Horace’s father, was that he was the local correspondent for Carleton.]
August 2007. More news from the foothills…. I wondered what had happened to Geoffrey Thornton after he was sent back from Oz after the rest of the family died from Spanish Flu. I got a call from his son Brian Jackson Thornton. Geoffrey was looked after at Wonthagie until he came home by the Wisharts who owned the general store. When WW2 started they sent word to Geoffrey that if he wanted he could send Brian out to them to get away from the bombing but he never went. Geoffrey died aged 55 years on 2 April 1965. Brian has a letter written by Geoffrey’s father, Herbert, which is a diary of his journey out to the mine, he is going to let me have a copy. He told me that the Thornton family bought Windle’s funeral directors in Barlick after Jim Windle died and then sold it on later to the Co-op.
[1881 census: Dwelling: 4 Whiteoak’s Buildings, Carlton In Skipton. William THORNTON, M, 37, M, born Colne, Lancashire. Head, Cotton Factory Operative. Susan H. THORNTON, 42, Kensington, Middlesex. Wife.
Mary A. THORNTON, 13, born Carlton, Daughter, Cotton Cop Winder. Henry THORNTON, 11, born Carlton, Son, Cotton Factory Operative. Edwin THORNTON, 8, born Carlton, Son, Scholar. Frederick THORNTON, 5, born Carlton, Son, Scholar. George Wm. THORNTON, 2, born Carlton. Herbert Thornton was 55 when he died in 1965 so he was born in 1890. Edwin, Horace’s father was born in 1873 and this makes him 43 years old when he died in 1916.]
Horace Thornton in 1979.
Right Horace, we'll start at the beginning. When were you born?
R - Nineteen Ought Six, 13th April.
Thirteenth of April, 1906.
R- Nineteen ought six. I'm seventy-three.
So that makes you, that's it, seventy-three year old. Oh, nobbut a young un. And where were you born Horace?
R- At Carleton. near Skipton.
What were the street, do you know?
R- South View. It's just as you're going into Carleton from Skipton end, on the right hand side. [on Carla Beck Lane] There’s a street on t’left hand side, a few houses and then when you get a bit further up on t’right hand side there is three houses together and I were born in the middle house.
How many years did you live in that house?
(50)
R- Well, there was six children in our family, and me father were a mule spinner at Carleton Mill, and he died in 1916, and that left me mother with six children. We lived there for about two years after me father died. I had a sister, an older sister, she died of TB, when she were twenty-one, that were in 1917, that left five of us.
She'd die when you were at Carleton then.
R- Yes, when they were in that house.
Yes, so you were in that house till you were about twelve year old. Yes.
R- Yes, and then we moved to Chapel Street. Now an aunt of mine owned…
Chapel Street…?
R- At Carleton.
At Carleton.
R- Aunt of mine owned some houses in that street. She'd ...well my father were a Whiteoak, my grandfather wore a Whiteoak, and .. joiner and undertakers and when he died he left, they'd been builders as well, he left that row of houses. But they had to be sold and distributed amongst the family. There were five girls and three lads, and this aunt of mine, aunt Annie, bought two of the
houses. Another uncle bought one of them, and a cousin across the street bought another, they were all living in them you see. And a cousin further down bought another house you see. All these houses sort of remained in the Whiteoak family. Well, it come empty and me aunt, me mother’s sister, let me mother have that house rent free because she had no income only washing and cleaning and looking after the church. I mean, all my young life, all I can remember, wakening up early, is the mangle going. Five and six o’clock at the morning, mangle going, and she used to he washing and drying
(100)
them and ironing and then we were sent out with a basket full of clothes, half a crown, washed and ironed.
All that'll come in Horace. I shall be asking you a lot of questions about the houses when you were young. We'll do that on the house on South View, see, because you were there for your first twelve years. Now where do you, where was your father born?
R- In Carleton and his father were a mule spinner you see. My grandfather were a mule spinner.
Now when you say a mule spinner, at Carleton who owned….
R- Slingsby, W and J Slingsby.
Was there a connection between Slingsby’s and Bracewell? Do you know?
R- None at all that I remember. That I know of, no connection whatever.
Aye. I have an idea, something rings a bell in my mind that Bracewell had a daughter that married, you know, William Bracewell from Barlick, old Billycock, had a daughter that married somebody that owned Carleton Mill. I might be wrong. Now, your father was born in Carleton. Where was your grandfather born?
R - On me mother's side or me father's side?
Your father’s father.
R – Well, he were born in Carleton I suppose. I don’t know, no.
Aye .. that’s right, if you don't know. And how many brothers and sisters did you have altogether?
R - I had three brothers and a sister, two sisters, one died, the oldest died, yes.
(5 min)
Yes. Well now, start with the eldest, start with the eldest and work your way through the children, and see if you can give me the names and the ages. The years they were born. Can you manage that?
R – Well, somewhere about it. Maude was twenty-one in 1917 when she died so she's been dead ...
Yes, so that were 1896.
R - Yes. Now then, the next one, Percy, he died last year aged seventy-six so he were born in 1903.
Last year did he die?
R - Last year.
Yes well, that’s 1902 then.
R – Yes, and I were born in 1906. And then I've a brother next, Cyril. He's three years younger than me.
Nineteen hundred and nine.
R – Aye, and there's a sister comes next, she is three years younger again.
Yes, that's 1912.
R – Yes. And I have a brother, the youngest, he's two years younger so that's 1914, yes.
Aye, that's 1914, yes.
R- Yes and me father died in 1916. Me mother’s, like me youngest brother, he were only like a baby in arms when he died.
Aye. And you came, you were what? I've listened to that, you were third, you were the third eldest in the family. That’s it.
R – Yes.
And now, which one was it that died, as a baby?
R – Maude, she died at 1917, she were twenty one, she died in 1917 and me father died in 1916.
Yes, but did you say that one of your brothers died when he was young?
R - Last year. Last year.
Oh aye, last year, that's it aye.
R - He died last year.
That's right aye. You say TB, what do you think caused that?
(200)
R – Well, what did cause T.B? I mean when, in my younger days they were dying all round you, left right and centre, and it wasn't malnutrition, because there were a farmer in Carleton, he farmed half of Carleton, and he’d three girls and a boy. Now two of the girls died of T.B.1 and… Well, I’ll tell you what it were, it were bad .. milk, because they milked anything did farmers then until, until there were T.B. Tested Cattle. It were rife in England were T.B. It were nothing but t'milk.
Yes. Aye. That's it yes.
R - That's all it were.
Yes, we tend to forget that you know?
R – Yes, it were milk and nothing else. And it were very infectious. They're, very infectionate. If that's the word.
Yes, infectious, yes.
R - Infectious yes, very infectious. Because I know when my sister got it, there were a field back door to us, and she slept in a hut in that field. The County Council provided a hut with windows that could open at each side, provided a bed, she hadn't to sleep in the same house with us because it were infectious.
Aye. I've never heard of that before.
R - Oh yes. Have you never been to a sanatorium?
Yes but I've never heard of them providing the hut you know?
R- Well they did, they provided the hut. And it were a brand new hut out in this field. I suppose they provided them where there was accommodation to put one. And mates of mine died of it. Oh yes, everywhere, folk were dying with TB. And in the country, all the fresh air you wanted, and it were nothing but the milk.
Aye, I think you’re probably right there Horace, aye.
R - It were.
When you were a child, can you remember any relations living with you?
(250)
R – No, no relations lived with us, no.
No. And so did you ever have any lodgers?
R - No. No lodgers.
Aye. And you say your father was a mule spinner when you were born?
R - A mule spinner, yes.
At Slingsby’s? Do you know whether he had any jobs before he was a mule spinner, or was he a mule spinner all his life?
R – Well, I know he used to be a reporter on the Bradford Daily Telegraph before he were married.
And born in Carleton!
R - Born In Carleton.
So, did he go to Bradford to work? He must have done.
R - He must have done. Oh I say, I wonder. How long he had it after he were married I don’t know, but he used to be a reporter. [SG: Local correspondent]
(10 min)
That’d be unusual then wouldn't it?
R- Yes, well….
It would.
R- But they are rather a brainy family. I don’t say I particularly were, but me father and his grandfather, he were t’Parish Clerk and a beautiful writer. Clerk to t’Parish Council, and verger at the church. And you see, they had to be somebody that could read and write in those days.
Of course they did, aye.
R- Because it’d be in the eighteen hundreds, and he were a beautiful writer were William Thornton, that were my grandfather.
And .. I never asked you your father's name.
R – Edwin.
Edwin?
R - And me youngest brother's called Edwin.
Aye. Did, what was your mother's job before she got married?
R - She worked, well, do you know anything about Skipton? She were a milliner, worked at Amblers.
Amblers aye. Are they still going?
R – No.
No, they've finished, I've heard that name before.
R - National Mill Store at the bottom of Otley Street, that were Amblers.
That’s it. Now when you say she was a milliner, was she actually making hats or was she working in the shop selling them?
R - Well she worked for Amblers, and it were a drapers and milliners.
Yes that’s it, yes. And did she work outside, did she do any work after she was married?
R – No, she wouldn't do. No.
(300)
No? And so of course she'd be looking after the children all the time. And how old was she when she died?
R – Seventy seven.
And when was that?
R - Well, I were forty-eight so that's twenty-five years since isn’t it?
Twenty-five, now, wait a minute, forty-eight, you are seventy-three now so that’s right, twenty five years since.
R - Twenty-five years since.
So that's 1954. The year after the Coronation.
R – Yes, aye.
Aye. And did any of your family leave Carleton? Say before 1930? You know, leave Carleton to go and live elsewhere?
R- I had a uncle who did. [Herbert Thornton] He went down to Australia. He were a mill engineer at Slingsby’s Mill and he served his time with Henry Browns. That’d be Barnoldswick. [Earby I should think] Served his time with them and got married and had one boy and he emigrated to Australia about 1912 and he went as an engineer in a gold mine.
Aye?
R – Aye. And it was at Sons of Gwalia. Sons of Gwalia I think were the mine at Wonthagie in Australia.
Sons Of?
R- Gwalia, the name of the mine.
[Sons of Gwalia is a famous gold mine in Western Australia. The mine was sunk in 1896 and the first manager was Herbert Hoover (1897 to 1908) who later became President of the United States. It reached a depth of 5,316 feet, became the second largest gold mine in Australia and closed in 1963. It re-opened in 1981 as an open pit working but is now once more a deep mine. In 1912 they imported the largest winding engine in Australia from Fraser and Chalmers of Erith and Chicago US who were makers of mining machinery. I smell a connection between Herbert Thornton and the engine… The town is about 150 miles north of Kalgoorlie]
Yes, that's it, aye. That’d be G w a 1 i a or something.
R – Aye. Sons of Gwalia, it's worked out now, such a long time since. But he were doing all right, they'd had another child, a baby girl. And then when the flu epidemic started in 1918 it killed him and his wife and the girl and left one boy. And he left it in his will that he'd to come back to Carleton. There were an aunt and uncle of his, his father's brother and sister, and my father's brother and sister, that hadn't been married, they lived in the family home at Carleton. And it were his wish that he came back to Carleton to be brought up with them. And he
(350)
did do, and he started courting a girl from Silsden. Her father had a farm and he had a horse and cart and worked on the road same as farmers did. They lent their horse and cart to work on t’road. And Geoffrey married their daughter and he could drive a motor car and they went into the haulage business right? Jacksons of Silsden. And the funeral, weddings and funerals and th’haulage business. You'll look in any paper, Jacksons of Silsden. And I’ll tell you, they do all the taxi work for them funerals. They're funeral directors at Barlick.
Windles?
R – Windles, that's it, they do it for Windles and if there's any funerals they have a hearse do you see and funeral cars or weddings. And that were how they got in the business, he married the daughter, and he had a horse and cart, and they got a wagon and started carrying and then in the car hire business. [SCG note: I didn’t realise until this year (2007) that the Thorntons bought Windles Funeral Services after Jim Windle died and ran it until they sold out to the Co-op.]
Now, out of the houses you lived in as a child, you'll remember the first one best, South View, won’t you?
R - Yes.
Well, so we’ll talk about South View, and then afterwards we'll just have a quiet look at Chapel Street ...
R - Chapel Street, yes.
To see what the job were there. Now, just simple questions Horace but it gives us a picture of what the house was like, because what houses were like tells you how people lived of course. That's the idea of it. How many bedrooms did it have?
R - Two.
And what other rooms were there?
R - There were a living room and a kitchen, [This is a bit confusing but I think Horace means that there was a kitchen which they also called the living room and a front room they called the house because he talks later about his mother washing in both the kitchen and the living room] we called it the house, and the living room. We always called the front room the house, we didn't live in it, we were in at night and we were in at week ends and it were a fair big room and the staircase, it went up out of the front room, and it were open staircase.
(400)
Yes that's it.
R - A newel post at the bottom and all twisted ...
Banisters, yes.
R - Bannister up there and I don't know whether it's like it now or not.
Aye. Oh no it's nearly sure to have been changed Horace nearly sure. And can you remember any of the furniture? In the bedrooms for a start off, what were the furniture in the bedrooms?
R – Well, we'd a wash hand stand, very old fashioned and it'd be whitewood. It were painted and there’d be a dressing table. And in the front bedroom, where the main of us slept, we all slept there, me mother and father in the back; that's what I remember of sleeping there. And I can, I can remember to this day when me mother were coming to bed she always, if I happened to be awake, she always used to come in with a candle and look round us all. And I can picture that as if it were yesterday.
And how about the furniture in the kitchen?
R – Well, there were a square table. And in the house we had a square table, but a bit fancier in the house, with, and a dresser, they called them dressers then, the white sideboards and there were a low fireplace in the house, and an ordinary fireplace and boiler and oven in the back kitchen.
Yes, in the kitchen aye. So really, the house, you would just use that at week ends and for sitting in at night. So where did you have your meals?
R- In the kitchen. Always in the kitchen because the cooking range were there.
Yes that's it. And where did your mother do, well your mother did the cooking in there, on that range?
R - Yes, did the washing and, and stone floors.
Yes. Now, she did the washing in the kitchen as well?
R- Yes.
And have no bathroom?
R – No, no bathroom.
So, if you were going to have a bath where did you have it?
R - We washed in front of the fire in a tin bowl.
Now I always ask this question Horace and I know what the answer is before I ask it. Did you have a special bath night?
R – No.
Oh! Thank God for that!
R- Oh no we didn't. But I know t’younger end, they were bathed every night, baby and next one or two, that’d be Edwin and me sister.
(450)
R – They’d be bathed every night but we bathed when we were in you see? When everybody…
Yes. Well, that's very refreshing Horace because…
R- When everybody went to bed like we, we had ours in.
Well, that's very refreshing, because nearly everybody I ask says Friday night.
R- No.
Now, lavatory .. outside?
R – Yes, we went to the end and there were three together.
Now, were they water closets or buckets?
R - They were water closets then. Now then, them houses, they hadn’t a road round t’back. You went in through a door at the end of the three houses and up and round the back. The first house, you came to their back door first, then our house the second one and the third house hadn't a back door, they had to go round their own end you see? Oh yes, they had a back door. Yes they had a back door but they didn’t
(20 min)
come past our house, it finished, there were a wall up at our house, and the third house had their entrance round the other end.
Yes. So, and you said there were no road round the back?
R- No.
So when they were dry toilets they must have emptied their own.
R - They must have.
Yes. And can you, when you say they were water closets, were they tipplers or flush?
R - They'd be tipplers, tipplers, oh aye.
Aye that's it.
R - Aye they were tipplers.
And had the house got piped water?
R- Yes, and gas.
Yes, now when we say piped water, that means just cold water of course. Aye.
R- Yes, that's it. Because we used to fill the side boiler, yes.
Side boiler, that’s it Horace.
R - And if you wanted a wash you'd dive into it wi’t lading tin.
That's it, lading tin, aye. Did they, did you have a stair carpet?
R – Yes, oh aye.
How was it held down?
R- Well I don't know. Eh, brass rods. Brass rods, because I can always remember they were always slipping out. You see, they were always slipping out.
Who polished them?
R - Oh, me mother did all t’work.
Now, did the neighbours have stair carpets?
R - Well I don’t know, the woman next to us, she were, it were a Miss Thompson, and her parents had Carleton Post Office, Post Office and grocer shop and she were an old woman. I don't know how old she’d be then, and she didn't work, they'd retired from the shop and she were living, she lived there in the first house. And it were rather a better house than ours you know, different windows, same as if there'd been our two houses and then this one built on.
(500)
It nearly sounds like a landlord and two houses to rent doesn't it? Aye.
R – Yes. And we paid one and six a week.
One and six a week. That’s one of the questions later on, you're too good Horace.
R- One and six a week. Aye. Aye ... but it comes back to you you see. One and six a week.
Oh it does, yes it does.
R- But we did better after that, when we went into me aunt's house and paid nothing.
Aye, rent free. What sort of floor coverings did you have on the rest of the floors? Bedrooms for a start of.
R - Well, lino ...
Yes, oil cloth and …
R- And prick rugs.
Aye .. Now you call them prick rugs, peg rugs, that's it aye.
R - Peg rug, aye peg rugs.
And downstairs in the parlour, you know, in the house?
R - Carpet, it’d be carpet in the middle.
Yes. That was a square?
R - Carpet square, and there'd be lino all round. That way it would cover t’flags up. you ace?
Yes. That's it. Did that carpet stop down all the time?
R - Oh yes, all the time. Aye.
And in the living room, carpets in the living room?
R- No, it’d be, it'd be coco matting as there. Because you see me mother had to wash there, she had something that she rolled up.
That's it yes.
R - Put out of t’way, but with any amount of peg rugs.
Can you ever remember sand on t’floor in the house?
R – Never, but I do know lots of people had sand on t’floor. Because as lads, when we were wanting some money, like a gang of us, we’d go and break some sand. And we used to go round hawking it, we knew the houses that had sand in t’kitchen.
Now then, that's interesting, you say break some sand?
R – Well, ordinary river sand won't do, they wouldn't have that. You couldn't go down to the river and get up a bucket full. You had to get soft sand stone, and hammer it, that makes sharp sand.
Aye.
R- We had to do that, we used to take ‘em in those stone jam jars. I’d say that’d be a penny. But we had to break it, they wouldn't have sand, soft sand, it were no good. It had to be sharp, it crunched under your clogs, and clean the floors. And soft sand doesn't do it, it just…
That's it. Sluthers about yes. Aye.
R - Stuck, all went into lumps.
Aye there you are.
(550)
R- Now where the daughter lives, it's all soft sand. And you dig the garden and then first time it rains there is a crust on top, you have to break it up. You see, go round hoeing it, it forms a crust anywhere.
Aye. What kind of curtains or blinds did you have?
R- Well, they were paper blinds, these where you had a cord on them. And there'd be lace curtains and happen thicker curtains in winter.
Aye. And what kind did your neighbours have?
R- Well I don't know, you didn't go into neighbours houses when you were younger.
Now that's an interesting thing. There in no question in here about that, but you've just said something there. Obviously I've interviewed a lot of people, and I’m beginning to get a sort of an idea about what things were like, and it strikes me that people kept, in many ways they kept more private in their houses in those days.
(25 min)
R – Yes, probably they did, but me mother'd go into the other houses, but kids weren't allowed to go in you see?
That’s it, yes.
R- But when, I’m happen advancing a bit, but when we went into Chapel Street, we were nearly all related and everybody went into everybody’s house. You see, I'd an aunt and uncle next door and a cousin next, and a cousin across the street, and another cousin further down. You see, because they'd been Whiteoak's houses, you see?
I can see it, aye. Another thing, I don't know, of course I was brought up this way, if you went round to somebody's house and they were having a meal, you kept out of the way didn't you.
R- Well. You didn't go but you just, you just went into your relations as you wanted you see?
Yes, that's it, aye. Did, can you remember anybody in the street not having curtains?
R - Oh no, not everybody. I mean, you were in a village like, and everybody's respectable in a village. Though there were houses in what they called New Street. Now at that time there were tramp weavers and tramp spinners, and New Street, they were very old houses. One man had four or five houses there, rented them and took them tramps in, tramp weavers. They hadn't curtains but I suppose they had bunks, and it wore like …
Did the women round about donkey stone the door steps?
R- Yes, my wife does.
Still? Aye ...
R- Yes. Now I tell you why. She always used to put a white chalk mark on, when she'd done her steps, on the end of the step and on to the edge of that, and out at the back. Now you couldn't get donkey stones could you?
No
R - They, they were a thing of the past. Well, a woman next door she has some relations, do you know where Garsdale Head is, Garsdale Station, up above Hawes
Yes.
R- Well, as you go up to the station, on the right hand side there is a shop, a shop and a warehouse. It used to be a very busy shop before the motorcar days, because it were, it were the man who supplied all the Dales wi’ proven and all the groceries. Well, it’s sort of gone down, but this woman, oh she is there now and she were up at Easter and the son in law and my daughter were here. And so we went up to Hawes. And my wife had never been, never been up to Garsdale Head .. she's heard plenty about it from Betty [I later was told that the lady’s name was Hetty, short for Harriet], this is her next door neighbour and John says “Is there anywhere you'd like to go?” So she says “Yes, I'd like to go see Betty" she were there then, and they went and Edna, that's her cousin that lives there and has this shop, she were showing us round, we went into a big warehouse at the end where there were coal and all sorts stacked and there were a pile of white stones, like bricks they were. “By gum” - I says – “I haven't seen them for a lot of years.” And she said “Aye, do you want one?” I says yes and so she get me two. And we brought them back and she [H’s wife] does, when it's decent she whitens the edge of the flag.
Funny you should say that, I bought some only the other week. I went into an ironmonger’s shop for something in Manchester and he were clearing out and he had a boxful on t’floor and he were going to throw them away.
R- Were they bigguns? These were as big as bricks.
No, these weren't that big.
R - I know, they are little square uns. But these are as big as a brick.
Aye. With a donkey on ‘em. These had the donkey on 'em I think.
[24 years later, I have just gone to the cupboard to have a look because I still have them. They have a stamp on which is a representation of a lion and the words “LION ENGLAND’]
R - These have a name on of who made them.
Aye that's it, aye.
R - As big as bricks. And there were a reight pile. She says nobody wants them now, I don't suppose that they knew anybody had them.
Aye, aye. How was the house lit?
R - Gas.
Gas. Were they, what were they, fan tails or incandescent?
R - An incandescent mantle. And they're uprights
Yes, with a fork in.
R- Because, aye, there used to be a fork, and I’ve seen them hooking them on, and then the bottom’d break off, and they were blowing about.
(650)
How did you go on in summer wi’ t’door open and t’bombers coming in, moths? You know did they use to do them in?
R- Well, we weren't really, it were right on t’roadside, and we had the front door and a vestibule, glass vestibule. And many a time, not once, we’d gone to bed in summer and the front door’d been left open, wide open all night. Vestibule door shut, but we never noticed that the front door were open.
When can you first remember electric light, which house did you first have electric light in?
R- Chapel Street.
(30 min)
Chapel Street?
R- Yes.
Can you remember, or did you ever know how it was charged for?
R – Well, I’ll tell you how it came to Carleton, how we got electricity before such a lot of other people. A man called Percy Hudson lived at Carleton Grange, and he was a director of the Yorkshire Power Company, and he had electricity brought to Carleton before they had it in any other village. They brought it down the valley, and brought it over to Carleton and he lit his own house and he put it in the church. Of course that were propaganda, you see. People would go into church and see electric light and wanted it in their own houses, and that were when electricity came to Carleton.
Where were it generated, do you know?
R - Down at Leeds. It were Yorkshire Power Company, a private company. And they brought the power line right down the valley; and it didn’t go into Skipton. Skipton wouldn't allow it, they must have had a supply of their own somewhere. And it just branched, it come over into Carleton.
What year were that, do you know?
R – Well, immediately after the.. oh, I don't know, I really couldn’t say.
You're right.
R - But I were living at Carleton and it’d be fifty years since.
How did you get rid of the household rubbish.
R- You put it in the ashpit, you had an ashpit.
Now in your case where was th’ashpit, because there wasn't a road at the back, was there?
R - No. It were at the other end of the houses, there were ashpits at the other end, and they used to come round when they were full, a man came with a horse and cart, you see. He’d have the job of emptying the ashpits. But everybody hadn’t an ash, hadn't flush toilets, there were lots of places where they had a tin box or some houses it just vent into the ashpit, it went into the ashes you see. It were raked out and went with the night soil. Yes, it were the ashes.
(700)
Is that right? I didn't know that.
R - Yes.
Yes, that’s like the old midden idea.
R – Yes, the old midden yes. Because I know an uncle of mine that had a farm and he lived in Carleton, uncle on me mother's side, it all went into the ashpit and I can remember they used to clean it out and take it on to his farmland. His farmland were in a different place to where he lived, you see? The farm buildings were outside Carleton you see, and he lived, he lived in Carleton and he brought the milk home to his house twice a day and people went and collected it.
People went and collected the milk off him?
R- Yes, he didn't go round with it.
He didn't hawk it.
R – No.
Aye, it sounds interesting and all. How did your mother do the washing?
R- Well, mangle and, we hadn’t a set pan, but after a while she got a gas boiler you see, and boiled the clothes in this gas washer and scrubbed them and boiled them and had an old mangle.
How about the dolly tub?
R- Dolly tub, yes but wooden. . Chaps used to come round mending dolly tubs, putting fresh garths on. And you remember…?
Now, when you say ‘fresh garths’ that's the hoop.
R- Yes. Do you remember the old brass and iron beds? They used to have laths across, metal laths, you interlaced them. Do you remember those beds?
Yes, spring steel.
R- Yes, and if any of these dolly tub men come round they were always asking had you any garths off the old iron bedstead, they’d give anything to get hold of those things, you know, spring steel to mend your tub with. Yes.
So it were a wooden dolly tub.
R- Wooden dolly tub, yes.
And how often did she do the washing?
R - Mondays every week. Mondays.
How long did it take her?
R- Well, she were washing when we got up, and she were bothering with them, at getting them dry, at Monday night if it hadn't been a good day. And she were ironing, it seemed to be all Tuesday.
How did she iron it?
R - Old iron on the fire. She used to be trotting backward and forwards putting them on the fire.
Which sort, were they irons that you put in t’fire, and then used on a slipper?
R- No, put in the fire.
Yes but…
R- Not a slipper, she used to rub them on the hearth rug, she took them off the fire.
That's it.
R - They had a article at front of the bars and then they stood them there. Put them right up to the bars, not into the dirty fire. Stood them up to the bars and then she used to run them on the hearth rug and then spit on them.
(750)
(35 min)
That’s it, because there were so many different sorts weren't there, there were block irons, and charcoal ...
R- And there were charcoal irons.
And then there were gas irons, and some with slippers, and some without.
R - But these were the old fashioned iron, and when they got pitted we used to take them up to Slingsby's Mill, and the chap in the mechanic shop, he'd buff them up for you. He had a, there were a belt about so wide, they said it were whale skin, they always said it were whale skin, and he’d put your iron on and it polished them up. They did that for polishing any of their stuff. But they always said it were whale skin, that’s what I know about it.
Yes, I could see how it could have been shark skin but not whale skin, yes.
R – Well, it could have been.
I've never come across it before, but no, you say it was whale skin…
R – No, you see I were only allowed [in]when we used to take these irons up to the mill, and the engine driver, a fellow called Geldard, Jack Geldard, he used to …
Aye. Can you remember the engines at Slingsby’s?
R- Oh aye. There were three engines, two at one side and one at the other.
Beams?
R- No. There were just one a beam engine that ran the shed but there were just ordinary engines at both the old spinning mill, that ran the spinning mill and what they ran the new mill. They were big engines, run with steel belts. They used to be rope drive, and, and just an ordinary flywheel, they used to be rope drive and then they ground the grooves off because the ropes were having, they were having a lot of trouble with the ropes and their were steel belts after that. And there were always trouble after with them. In frosty weather, there used to be a cork, you'll know about it, a cork covering on the wheel and they used to slip. They'd get started at Monday morning and it’d stop. The cork slipped and that wore, word went 'round that the cork had slipped and they'd be out about happen an hour or two till they glued some fresh cork on.
What can you remember most clearly about washing day?
R - Well making up and hearing the mangle going, and coming home at Monday, on a wet day and clothes round the fire. And mother used to say “I don't know how it is but if ever I have clothes at t’front of the fire you want to be round the fire yourselves!” You know we were pushing in and we were cold and she'd right big ones, [maiden/clothes horse] we have a little un about a yard high but…
Yes, you mean a maiden, clothes horse aye.
R - Aye, them six foot high, take a whole sheet.
(800)
What did you call them, did you call them a maiden or a clothes horse?
R - Aye. Clothes horse.
Aye. And like it’d be catch as catch can for tea that day would it?
R - Oh no, we never, even though we were poor we never went short, there were always meals ready.
How did your mother clean the house?
R - Well, she got down on the floor I suppose and scrubbed the floor. Thursday night or were that Friday, there were, everything were polished up and put down. Fire irons and fender were put down for t’week end and taken up [on Sunday].
That's it, that's it. Yes.
R - Because there were the flag for the hearth and she used to have it whitened, white stoned, and then eventually it come to an enamelled plate with flowers on. We advanced so far. And we used to have the old lino on the table from Lancaster.
Aye, oilcloth, American cloth.
R - Yes oilcloth. Well I said lino aye.
They used to call it American cloth and all, didn't they?
R – Yes, and how we used to get them, Carleton had a fair lot of railway men, living in Carleton, and they used to be working at Lancaster and if ever any of ‘em were working at Lancaster we used to go and ask them to bring you a tablecloth. That were how you got your tablecloth from Lancaster.
(40 min)
Was there anything, when she was cleaning up was there anything that she paid particular attention to? You know, was there anything that was really her pride and joy?
R – No. The steel fender, steel fender, that had to be polished. And then eventually they packed up to the black leading and did it with blacking on, lamp black paint you see, that were another step forward, with black enamel.
Aye. Did you and your brothers and sister do any jobs in the house?
R - No. But I know what I did. When the doctor came round Carleton he’d examine the person and then he'd may “I’ll make them a bottle up. Send somebody on for it.” And I’ve done dozens of times, walked to Skipton and collected, gone round the surgery and collected the medicine and carried it back to Carleton. And you got a penny.
Yes. Of course, ‘cause there again in those days they used to dispense their own medicines did the doctors.
R - Yes they did and he’d say to whoever were ill “I'll make a bottle up and you can send somebody in for it.” And if it were after dinner, you see, it were too late for the carrier. We had a village carrier, and he collected them if they were ready before dinner. But if the doctor visited after dinner he made the medicine up and it had to be collected [some other way]
Apart from going for the prescriptions, did you do any more jobs outside the house, do you know, like running errands, or gardening, or owt?
(850)
R - Well when me father worked for Slingsby’s, as well as being a mule spinner he was the verger at Carleton Church. He’d taken the job up when his father died. It were in the Thornton family for about hundred years. And when me father died me mother kept the cleaning of the church on, because she had to exist of something, and me eldest brother, he did the verger's work, did the Sunday work. And one of my jobs when I came out of school were to go see to the boiler and such.
Coke?
R – Coke. And it wasn’t these horseshoe boilers in this ...
Aye, Robin Hood aye. [Robin Hood was a type of coke boiler very commonly used for space heating in schools and churches.]
R - It wasn't the horseshoe boiler, it wore a square brick affair. And a small fire door at the bottom for raking the muck out, but you had to throw the coke on to the top and lift a lid up and it went down a hole. The article were like that now ….
Pear shaped inside. Aye.
R – Yes, opened out and all the pipe ends were all round except for where the, the fire door where you put your poker into. And that were at ten year old.
Did you ever help with the younger ones, you know, dressing them or eating or anything like that?
R - I used to have to rock the cradle. I were the only one who could get the youngest one to sleep, I can remember that. It's funny is that.
What sort of a cradle were that Horace?
R - Well, a wood one and it, it rocked.
On the floor? Yes.
R – Yes, rocked this way. You put your foot on to it, and rocked it like that.
Yes. And did your father do any work in the house, you know, mending, decorating, anything at all, looking after the children?
R - Well you see I were ten [when he died] Before that you don't have much recollection, but he used to do a lot of fishing in the canal. You know, he used to walk, you know where Niffany is? He used to walk across the fields from Carleton, across the river bridge and fish round there at Niffany. I can remember him taking me across those fields fishing, and I had a little rod ...
The only trouble with canal fishing is you can’t eat what you catch can you, unless you get a big pike or sommat like that ...
R- No.
And they rented the house didn't they?
R – Yes.
And one and six a week you said. Who was the landlord?
R - Miss Thompson, Miss Thompson owned the first one and drew rents off the other two.
Yes. Was she a good landlord?
R - Well I suppose so, I suppose so.
Did your mother ... now, obviously she did after your father’d died but we'll do this question in two parts. Like, before your father died, did your mother do any work in the house to earn a bit of money, you know, like child minding, taking in washing or baking or cooking ?
R- No. Well you see a mule spinner were like one of the better class cotton operatives a mule spinner were like the elite of the mill.
So, now, after your father died, that was a different story wasn't it?
R - Yes.
Tell me about that Horace.
(900)
(45 min]
R - Well, we were always short of money but never of food. That sounds a funny thing, but I had two uncles that had farms.
SCG/31 January 2003
7,530 words
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 79/AD/02
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 2ND JULY 1979 AT 16 COWGILL STREET, EARBY. THE INFORMANT IS HORACE THORNTON, TAPER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
So, after your father died ..obviously, as you say, your father were one of the aristocracy in the mill and it’d be a big change for your mother, she’d feel it. Now before you go on to tell me how she did make a living, how about parish relief?
R - Never got parish relief.
Never got parish, no, that's all right because we come on to things like that later, but I was just wondering, she was in a position where she had to make enough money to keep the family. What did she do Horace?
(50)
R- Well, washing and we looked after the Church and when me father died in 1916 I had a brother that were just learning to weave, that were at Carleton Mill, learning weaving. Well it weren’t much of a shop weren't Slingsby’s, poor pay. So I had an uncle that were weaving in Broughton Road, Rycroft and Hartleys ... well it weren’t Rycroft and Hartley then, it were Wilkinson, Jimmy Wilkinson and Company down Broughton Road. He [the brother] went there learning to weave and he were there weaving for a while. Then I started working, I were twelve, started half time, the day I were twelve I started half time, doffing at Slingsby’s Mill. It were alternate, six o’clock in the morning, work till dinner time, and then school in the afternoons. Then the following week alternate. [My mother worked half time and she told me she liked working in the afternoons best as she hadn’t to get up so early. SG.]
Did anybody, any other women round about do the same thing, taking washing in, or child minding?
(100)
R – No, they nearly all worked, went to the mill. You see there were weavers wanted, there were card room operatives there were winders and beamers…
And is that house still standing?
R – Yes, very nice house.
Now, what exactly did your mother cook on?
R - We had a gas oven and the fire. And she cooked on the fire and in the side oven as much as ever she cooked, she didn't like the gas oven, didn’t bake bread in it. Always baked on Thursdays.
Yes. Now when did she first have a gas oven?
R – Well, they had it all my time. Yes.
And what day did the make bread?
R- Thursday.
Thursday. Aye
R- She baked at Thursday …
How much did she make at one time?
R - Well, about a stone and a half. [21lb.]
About a stone and a half of flour?
R – Yes, a stone and a half of flour. But there were pastry and other things amongst it. pasties and sweet loaves, she always had plenty about like that.
Pies, did she bake pies?
R - Baked pies, always meat and potato pie, invariably at Thursday. Mondays we had the cold meat ... and then….
Resurrection!
R- Yes. Tuesday there’d be no butcher open, or there might be .. just have liver or something like that. A bit of stewed meat. And then it’d be meat on Wednesday
(150)
(5 min)
and meat and potato pie at Thursday. And there were a fish man used to come round, we’d have fish at Friday.
Yes. When you say the fish man used to come round….
R- From Skipton.
Yes. Horse and cart?
R- Yes, horse and cart.
Aye, that’d he delivered by rail to Skipton.
R - It would.
Were it good fish?
R- Yes, it were fresh fish you see and cheap. They called him George Wood.
George Wood. Any idea were that fish came from?
R- I haven’t. It might be sent from Leeds you see. In small quantities, same as he’d want, come from Leeds.
Yes. Very well organised thing the transport of fish by rail in those days, very well organised.
R - Yes, It was, it was. You see it were always here on the station at six o’clock. It hadn't come the night before. It were on station here at six o’clock in the morning and you could go and collect it.
That’s at Earby?
R – Yes, at Earby.
Now, other things that she made. Did she make jam?
R- Always.
Marmalade?
R- No, we weren't marmalade people, never made marmalade but we always used to get blackspice and gooseberries out of the garden and…
Now, wait a minute, blackspice ... ?
R- Blackberries.
Blackberries, I’ve never heard them called that.
R - Blackberry, we always called them blackspice, well they were spice to us.
[Spice is a dialect word for sweets.]
Yes aye, sweets, that’s it, yes.
R - They stare and all when you says spice, you mean spice .., but blackspice.
Yes, that's blackberries, aye. How about pickles?
(200)
R- Pickled onions made her own pickles .. she used to make her own sauce, Yorkshire Relish, she had the recipe and very simple to make. You could make a quart for nearly the price of a quart of vinegar. There isn’t much to it, pickling spice and a bit of corn flour to make it thick and you left it without corn flour to make it thin.
Aye. And did she make homemade wine or beer?
R – Yes, particularly Burnet, do you know what Burnet is?
[BURNET, Great. Botanical: Sanguisorba Officinalis (LINN.)
Family: N.O. Rosaceae
Synonyms---Garden Burnet. Common Burnet. Parts Used---Herb, root. Habitat---Grows in moist meadows and shady places, chiefly in mountainous districts, almost all over Europe. In Britain it is not uncommon, but is rare in Ireland. It is cultivated to a considerable extent in Germany for fodder, and has been grown here with that view. It will grow tolerably on very poor land, but is not a very valuable fodder plant. Parts Used Medicinally---The herb and root, the herb gathered in July, and the root dug in autumn. Medicinal Action and Uses---Astringent and tonic. Great Burnet was formerly in high repute as a vulnerary, hence its generic name, from sanguis, blood, and sorbeo, to staunch. Both herb and root are administered internally in all abnormal discharges: in diarrhoea, dysentery, leucorrhoea, it is of the utmost service; dried and powdered, it has been used to stop purgings. The whole plant has astringent qualities, but the root possesses the most astringency. A decoction of the whole herb has, however, been found useful in haemorrhage and is a tonic cordial and sudorific; the herb is also largely used in Herb Beer]
I've heard of it but …
R - Well it grows on railway embankments and that, the only place it does grow, where the grass isn't cut. And they've like a red, a red bob on the end, and we used to go gathering a pillowcase full. We’d go across the railway, down Skipton railway, it's quite near Carleton. We used to go on to the railway line and get a pillowcase full and put them to steep in the baking bowl, you know, the baking bowl's so big, she used to be down her knees kneading, not a bit in a fancy bowl on a table, down on [the floor]
Aye ... Three foot across, aye.
R - Aye that’s what she used to bake in. And, and the old fashioned bread pot used to be full at Thursday night.
Yes. Tell me something, you just triggered something off with me now, can you ever remember babies being bathed in the bread bowl?
R - No, no. Not in t'bread bowl, but she might have done, might have done.
(250)
I've seen it. I've seen it done, I was just wondering.
R - Yes. Might.. ah it would be because me mother'd never get the big tin bath out to bathe me sister and me brother in. It’d be the baking bowl.
Aye. Funny, no one’s ever mentioned that before.
R- It would be. It’d be the baking bowl because I've heard of babies being bathed in t’dolly tub. And a woman told me she couldn’t afford a pram and she kept her children, she'd two young uns, she kept them in the dolly tub to stop ‘em straying. popped them in the dolly tub to play.
Did she make any of her own medicine?
R- Yes, one thing, and it were sugar, butter and vinegar. I think that’s what it were. And she used to warm it up in a cup over a light, over a candle and if we were coughing she’d just come and give us a spoonful and I make it up for our grandchildren now if they have a tickling cough.
Aye. I’ve never heard of that one Horace.
R- Vinegar, sugar and butter.
Aye. Sounds like good stuff.
R- Well it were. And a good spoonful, a good spoonful of butter, a spoonful of vinegar a spoonful of sugar and just warm it till it all melted and give it to ‘em warm. You see you didn't need much at once. Eh, I can see her now coming wit' cup, coming upstairs when we were puffing at night as they used to call it. ‘Stop your puffing!’ and give us a drink of this and it did.
(300)
Aye. How about the old fashioned ones, you know. Did she make any other sort of medicine?
R- Not that I know.
Can you remember any old fashioned remedy she used?
R - That's the only one I can remember, of course I use it now for any of our grandchildren.
How about a sock round your neck it you had a sore throat?
R - Oh yes, and it acts, it does, it does act.
Yes it does, especially it you've got sweaty feet. Aye.
R – Aye, but it does work, anything wool round your neck.
Yes, how about friar’s balsam?
R- Well. Iodine we used to have and friar’s balsam on a sugar lump. Aye. That’s what we did.
That's it, aye. Terrible stuff. I used to hate it.
[Friar’s Balsam. A stimulating application for wounds and ulcers, being an alcoholic solution of benzoin, styrax, tolu balsam, and aloes; compound tincture of benzoin]
R – Aye. Or friar’s balsam in a bowl of hot water and breathe … and a cloth over it.
Yes, inhale it, one of my mother’s stand byes was glycerine, lemon and honey. Now wait a minutes what’s the other thing besides friar’s balsam, there is something else I remember… Oh, brimstone and treacle,
R- Oh, always that stuff in Spring, always that stuff.
Aye. To clear your blood…
R- Yes, well it did. Aye, my wife tells about her mother in the Spring, giving them brimstone and treacle.
I often used to wonder, they used to think sulphur was marvellous stuff. It didn't matter what you had wrong with you, “It's your blood.” Aye. Something connected with that, tonics. You know, at one time, you know you’d go to a doctor, and he’d look at you and he’d say “Ah yes, general debility. You need a tonic.” And they used to give you this stuff didn’t they, you know?
(350)
R- Me mother always had, they called it Advocaat. She used to make gallons of that because she could always go across to the farm and get eggs and cream ad lib. All you had to do was get the rum or brandy, we’ve drunk gallons of that.
Yes. Great stuff. How did she make it? You tell me how she made It Horace.
R- Well she used to break the eggs into a bowl and cut lemons up and put them on. No, she didn’t break them…. She didn’t, she used to put the lemons on to it and the shells melted. They did, I can remember it in a big, in a big bowl, And all the Shells and everything went in. I thought it …
That's it. Put them in the lemon juice and after two or three days if you keep rolling them about there is just a skin left.
R- Yes.
And that's all you take out is the skin of the egg. That's it, the same stuff yes. And that, when you come to think, oh it’s real stuff is that. I am a great believer in that myself. I’m still old fashioned I am afraid. What did you usually have for your breakfast Horace? We are talking now about, say, school days.
R- Well, porridge, always porridge.
What did you have on your porridge?
R – Treacle.
When you say treacle do you mean syrup or black treacle?
R- Black treacle. We used to go to the shop and they had it in a barrel and you took a pint pot and they ran it full of black treacle. Golden syrup, poor folks didn't have golden syrup they had black treacle.
Anything else for breakfast, do you know, did you ever get an egg?
R- We’d have jam and bread. Well eggs, we had them. You could have them any time you see when you had them to go at. And you were buying them, there’d happen be fifteen for a shilling.
Aye, not a dozen? Fifteen? Aye.
R- Aye, like they were twelve pennies for whatever you got. They went up in quantity for the shilling you see, usually come round Easter and it was so many for a shilling and the quantity went up more.
(400)
Ah, I see, I’m with you now. Then like, you went to get your eggs, you gave them a shilling and they give you so many.
R- Yes, aye, that were it. And we used to use that water glass. What were it, Isinglass, we used to call it water glass.
Water glass, aye, for .. well I think isinglass is the same thing.
R- In these big earthenware pots, you used to dive in and get them out in winter time. All slimy and… but it were the only way of preserving eggs because they hadn't brought breeding to the perfection it is now and there were no eggs in Winter, or very few.
That is another thing that crops up time and time again Horace. The fact that people have got used to the fact now that at any time of the year you can go and buy strawberries, lettuce, tomatoes and eggs, stuff like this, whereas at one time there were certain seasons for certain things.
R- We only had vegetables when they were in the garden, that were that, and in Winter time it were dried peas and beans.
Aye, a bit of sprouts like, those ...
R- Sprouts and Savoy cabbages.
R- We always had a garden or two gardens, always, and you depended on what you grew. But we never grew enough potatoes to keep us, you bought your potatoes.
Yes well there is a section on gardens, we are coming on to that in a second. Well, anyway we are on it now. Did you eat all the fruit and vegetables that you grew or did you give some away or sell them?
R- We’d give them away, anybody who'd want them, and swap…
Aye, that’s it, and then folk would give you some of their surplus. Yes.
R- Yes, swap.
Did you have a pudding every day?
R- Practically, happen not at Monday, it were a busy day were Monday. She were probably washing and it wore cold meat and if there'd been any potatoes left at Sunday it were warmed up potatoes, otherwise it were mashed potatoes.
What sort of pudding?
R- Well, mainly suet, it’d be suet.
Ah, good stuff, sticks to your ribs.
R- Yes.
Can you remember or make a guess at how much milk your mother'd get a day?
R- Well, we just got it from the farm ad lib. It were “Take t’can and get t’milk.” Two quarts, we used to get a two quart can and it were there for the taking you see?
How much were milk then?
R- Tuppence a pint, fourpence a quart. But you see my uncle, the farmer, hadn’t been married, he lived on his own and when his father and mother died he lived on his own and me mother baked for him and cleaned for him. It were Exchange and Mart sort of thing but we just went for milk and eggs. And he made butter. Me mother used to go and make butter at Friday. She cleaned up for him at Friday and made butter and you see we just had fresh butter as we wanted it.
Did you ever have any margarine?
R- During the war. I remember going to Skipton and queuing up for it.
Ah now, you say you went to Skipton and queued up for it. Where did you queue for it.
R- Maypole Margarine.
Maypole.
R- Big long queue. I remember that there were a man stood with his arms across the door like with his back to t’folk, and just let two or three in at once. And there were, you know how they used to be cutting it off a big lump and patter, patter, patter and that's how you got it. [By ‘patter’ Horace is referring to knocking the margarine up into a square block with butter pats so that it could be wrapped neatly in greaseproof paper.] And it weren't rationed then you see, when you had to go and queue up, but once it were rationed you see, you got your ration.
Yes. Well we'll come on to rationing in a bit. Dripping?
R - Well, we always got dripping from the butcher, aye always. You could go and get good beef dripping, real stuff. Now when the youngster comes here, and I get up first, my wife being arthritic she doesn't get up so soon, I get up and make t’kids their breakfast. And he always says how is it grandad, when you make our breakfast it always tastes different to me mam’s? His mother uses lard and I use beef dripping.
Yes, in the pan.
R- Yes. And kids can tell the difference, “Oh they are good…”
Aye. Fruit. What sort of fruit did you have most often Horace?
R - Apples. There were one or two orchards in Carleton, you could go on and buy a pennorth of apples, two pennorth of apples, anything say, wind falls. And certain times of the year there were a variety of pear that they couldn’t keep but they used to grow hundredweights did them trees and you could… And then the wind came, you could go and fill your cap for a penny. They were right good and sweet, but there were two orchards in Carleton but one has been built on now and the other one's still there. But that were that. And gooseberries as I say, a few raspberries out of the garden, and then you could get fruit at the shop. I remember going buying dried apple rings
(20 min)
(500)
Aye .. Canadian, Aye.
R - You, you could buy apple rings and make pies out of them.
I still like them, I can eat them like sweets.
R - Dried apricots, I don't know whether there is such a thing now.
Yes there is yes. What vegetables did you have most often?
R- Well it’d be cabbage and Brussels and cauliflowers and peas, when there were peas available, and beans, broad beans, we grew the lot. And Brussels in Winter, Savoy cabbages.
I have a list of foods here Horace. I’ll give them to you and you tell me whether you had them every week, once a mouth, never or whatever it was. Bananas?
(550)
R – I don’t think we ever had bananas. I don’t think they were ever fond of them.
Rabbit?
R- Rabbit? Rabbit any time. Me uncle used to bring them and sometimes they had a full charge of shot in them. He used to shoot them and he used to snare them. When they were snared they were all right but if they'd had a full charge of shot and the fur had been blown into them you'd be spitting pellets out.
How about fried foods, you know, did you have much fried food?
R- Fried liver and onions. Not many chops, mutton were considered rather expensive mutton and lamb, you’d get beef a lot cheaper and there is never bones much in beef.
You’ve already mentioned fish on Fridays, but what sort did your mother usually get?
R – It’d be cod, nearly always cod.
Steaks?
R- Cod steak, they’d bring the whole fish in you see, it hadn’t been frozen a month before it had been landed, they just chopped the steaks off.
Cheese?
R - Well I never liked cheese, there’d be plenty of cheese about but it’s a thing I can't do with at all.
Cow heel?
R- No.
Tripe?
R – Yes sometimes but not much.
Where did you get that from?
R- Butcher would have it sometimes.
Trotters?
R- No.
Black pudding?
R - Black pudding, but my mother used to make that, it were lovely. Pig killing time we were always having it. She used to make it in big dishes. And if you heard of anybody that were killing a pig she would send us round, “Tell ‘em to save me some blood.” And they’d give you fat, and liver and you had a right do. Then she always used to have some stewed mutton with it and potatoes and the black pudding, blood pudding we used to call it. Oh, onions and rice, oh it were really good. And I remember eating that. And after we were married she always used to send some, my wife used to love it. Different to ordinary black pudding.
(600)
Eggs? Oh well, you said always plenty of eggs.
R- Yes.
Tomatoes?
R- No, I don't think there were many, you see they were a luxury, tomatoes.
Grapefruit?
R- No, never saw such a thing.
Sheep’s head?
R- Oh yes, sheep’s head. We’d get a sheep’s head and what they called the whole pluck for sixpence. That's the liver and the, heart and the lights. If you had a cat or anything you see, lights for the cat, but you'd get the lot for sixpence.
Yes, a lot of people don't realise that lights are the lungs aren't they.
R- Yes.
Did you ever have tinned food?
R- Very seldom. Tinned salmon. Aye, tinned salmon, sixpence a tin.
Yes. Aye, that was the stand by for the Sunday tea weren't it?
R – Yes it were, tinned salmon.
How about tinned fruit Horace?
R- No, not much.
No?
R – Not in my younger days but as we grew up there were more tins. It were coming into the country more.
Can you ever remember having any bad tins, you know, tins that were blown?
[It used to be quite common that a tin would be bad. You could tell them because the bacteria made gas which blew the end of the tin out in a bulge.]
R- No.
Yes, you didn't have much tinned food. Now why was that? Because there was no need for it, or your mother had something against it or it was an expensive way of buying or what?
R- Well, it was an expensive way of buying when you could buy fruit and stew it. And when rhubarb were in you had stewed Rhubarb and custard. And then sixty year since there weren't the tinned stuff about that there is now. More than sixty year since, seventy years since there weren't tinned food about. There were plenty of corned beef..
Argentine?
R- Yes, always the corned beef.
Aye. Did you drink tea?
R- Yes.
Cocoa?
R- Yes, we drank a lot of cocoa because at one time there were coupons in tins of cocoa and when you got so many you sent them away and got a box of chocolates and that were when we saw chocolate.
Aye, how about coffee?
R - No I don’t think we were coffee people. But an uncle of mine, the one that was a farmer, he always used to drink dandelion coffee.
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Made with roots?
R- Aye.
Aye, dried roots. I keep thinking I’ll try that, they tell me it's all right.
R - Well he did.
What did you have for Christmas dinner Horace?
R- Goose usually and a piece of pork. We always had a good do at Christmas, mother used to make her own pudding and a Christmas cake. She used to boil the puddings in the gas boiler and then have them hung up in the top of the kitchen. She made them weeks and weeks beforehand.
What was your favourite food do you think, when you were a child?
R- Anything. Nobody had any dislikes at home. If there were six of you at the table if anyone said “I don’t like that.” “Give me it.”
Yes. Tell me something Horace. I must admit that we are getting on to one of my personal grouses when I start talking about this. I've always said that I don’t think you can pay the chef or the cook, or whoever has cooked it, a finer compliment than to sit down and clear your plate. But there are very few that do it nowadays. Now you’d be brought up to clear your plate?
R- Yes, we cleared us plate and we were glad to do it, we were.
Yes, aye. I think you've probably hit the nail on the head there, you were glad to do it.
R- Yes. But when you are young and healthy, anything comes right, you see, you'd be out playing in the fields and you come home, you eat anything.
What do you think you'd have to eat, say the family was a bit hard up you know, after your father died, if things were a bit rough one week you know, and you were short, what would you have to eat that week?
R- We were never, we were never short, we never, we never missed a meal, and never .. me mother never said this is all we have. There were never that ... even though we were poor. We’d never anything to spend, we’d no spending money, and I used to do all the errands for this bachelor uncle of mine .. And when it got further on into the first world war he used to give me a ha’penny, well you couldn’t buy anything for a ha’penny and so I said to him one Saturday “You know uncle Leonard, you can't buy anything for a ha’penny now.” He says “All right then, give us it back.” You know? He took it back and I got nowt, I had to do the shopping for nothing. You know? But you
(700)
couldn't, 1 mean, there were nothing for a ha’penny. There were one time when you used to be able to go to the shop and look round the shelves and, and everything were a ha’penny, so many for a ha’penny, three for a ha’penny here, two for a ha’penny but not now.
When your father was working, did he come home for his meals?
(30 min)
R- No. He stopped in, had the dinner in, and cleaned, and did any repairing that mule, mules were driven by ropes, you know, the carriage were driven by ropes. If they had any ropes to replace and splice they'd do that in the dinner time. I used to take his dinner into the mill to him, and they were always in their bare feet, just a pair of thin cotton trousers and a thin shirt .. walking about on the bare flag floor.
That were on flags, they were spinning on flags there, were they?
R - Yes. Oh yes. Well, the machinery was in a three storey building, they wanted something firm, and mules work backwards and forwards you see ... And always very hot, kept it very warm.
Aye and humid?
R- Yes.
[Roy Greenwood, a master spinner, once told me that cotton spins best at the temperature and humidity it grew best in, 75 degrees Fahrenheit and at least 70% humidity.]
Did your dad always have the same food as the rest of the family, or did he sometimes hive something special?
R - I couldn’t say. We’d have our tea at four o’clock you see, straight from school and then he’d come home about half past five and we’d be out.
So his tea would be specially cooked for him anyway so many a time it could have been different.
R - It would.
Can you ever remember your mother going short to feed the rest of you?
R- No. We were never short of food, we were only short of money, loose money.
Yes. Who usually did the shopping?
R- Me mother. Or she had a book. If you know what I mean by a book. She’d take the book and go to the Co-op for such a thing. They wrote it down on the book and then me mother paid it on Friday.
Aye. So was she a big Co-oper?
R- Yes. It were right across the road from us.
Aye. She’d get groceries there obviously. Could she get meat there?
(750)
R- No, they'd no butcher. There were a butcher called Dean, and she always shopped at Dean’s. There were three, no, four butchers in Carleton but she always shopped at Dean’s.
Four butchers in Carleton?
R – Yes, there were butcher farmers. There were only one that was a butcher, the other were farmers and butchers. And Dean’s and Archers joined at a cow. Overends sold a cow on their own and a chap called White, he were a farmer in a big way, and he’d a butcher’s shop in Skipton, and a butcher shop in Carleton you know. But the way things are now I’ll bet they don't sell, they'll not sell a cow in Carleton.
Aye, I can believe that.
R - But there were four butchers, four butchers in cows and sheep but you go down to the butcher's shop now and they've little squares of meat, a fiver!
Well, it's a funny thing, I was once talking to Jack Stansfield and the way he put it to me, he said the people that are at home at week end can't afford to buy a right joint, and he said the people that can afford to buy a right joint, aren't at home at week ends. And I think there is perhaps a lot of truth in it. I think you're quite possibly right there. Would you say there was any difference in prices, you know, the service you got or the quality, between say a little corner shop in Carleton and the shop in Skipton?
R – Well, there were more butcher shops in Skipton. You could probably go to some that would sell cheap cuts, you see, you'd get cheap cuts at Skipton. But when my mother died she were Dean’s oldest customer, she must have shopped at Dean’s always.
Can you remember anything about pawn shops when you were young?
R- No, nothing, nothing.
There wouldn't be a pawn shop in Carleton would there?
R - There were one in Skipton, Ledgard and Wynn’s, you know that shop?
Yes.
R - That were a pawn shop. In Newmarket Street, Ledgard and Wynn’s. And when we got married, forty-four or five years since, they moved out of Newmarket Street into that shop they are in now. And Alan Driver were his lad, like there were Ralph Wynn, he got into a big way, you know what the shop's like. And he were the pawn broker and Alan Driver were the lad behind the counter.
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So Ledgard & Wynn’s actually started off as pawn brokers?
R – Yes, they were pawn brokers up Newmarket Street in a little shop. And Alan Driver if ever we saw him he always said, and if he were talking to us two and if he were talking to anybody else he said Mr and Mrs Thornton were our first big customers when we came here. But all the stuff in the house came from Ledgard’s you see, we were always taught never to get anything until you had the money in your pocket. And we got everything we wanted, furnished the house throughout, just one bedroom but all downstairs and I paid for it the week before we were married. Everything and it were £107. Now then, there were a bedroom suite, there were tables, there were chairs, there were the sideboard, stairs carpet, every room carpeted. It were £100. And I took this money to him and he knocks seven pound off. That were just hundred pound. And we started life straight up. But this was a rented house and we’ve been in it ever since. They kept pestering us to buy it and finally we did buy it. How much do you think?
This house?
R- Yes.
When? How long ago?
R – Fifteen or twenty years since.
Well, this house fifteen or twenty years since, £400?
R - Five hundred.
Five hundred, aye.
R - But there were a low fireplace in here. Not this, but bath and hot and cold water and washbasin upstairs and for a house that were built in 1907 that were very modern. And apart from that door and the vestibule and the central beating everything’s the same. Look at this skirting board, about nine inches deep and they’re two inches now.
Aye, that’s it.
R – And, this, all this were in.
Yes, all the cornice on the ceiling there.
R - Yes, in 1907.
(850)
Now we'll get back to Ledgard and Wynn’s and pawnbroking. How did people, how did people look on pawnbrokers in those days?
R- Well, they'll look down upon anybody that went to t’pawn shop at Monday morning you know, and put the clock in. Well, they were the commonest, the lowest of the low. And you know, in a village you got fairly straight.
How much housekeeping money do you think your mother’d have for a week?
R- I have no Idea.
No idea.
R- I haven't a clue you see because my father was spinning. I don't know.
Now then, first world war. You’d he eight year old when it started. Have you any recollection of the war starting?
R- In a way, yes. I remember walking up Carleton past the Post Office and they used to have placards up, same as they have now. And Verdun had fallen, Verdun had fallen, in big letters. And why we’ve heard of that fall and whether they’d tripped up or what, I had to enquire about who Verdun were! And it were explained to me and that were the first thing I remember. And then another, conscription just one big word CONSCRIPTION. And what were conscription? And I can remember those two things about the first world war. And then the rationing and going queuing up.
Yes, now let’s see if we can just pin things down a bit. I’ve had somebody telling me about their husbands being in the Terriers and they were called up almost immediately. And they were called up so quickly that these people were left without a wage.
R - There would be.
And they were handing out, people were being given chits to go to the grocer. Have you, did you ever see anything like that? Have you any experience of anything like that?
R- No. Well an uncle of mine on me father's side, he were in the Territorials, he were in a lot of years and there were rumours of war starting and kept being rumours, and he packed it in before the war started. He'd probably be a bit to old to go, and he never did go so he must have been a fair age when he, he turned forty you see and he chucked it in or else he’d have had to go. And that’s the one that used to take me walking, and love of walking, all over the place we went, as a lad. A pair of big clogs on clumping along the road.
(900)
Was food short during the first world war?
R- Well, not to my knowledge. Potatoes, they were, you had a job to get potatoes sometimes when you were getting into the spring of the year.
Can you recall queuing for food apart from Maypole and margarine?
14
R- No, because your rations came through. You see, you got your ration card and we got down to frozen meat, we thought that were the end of the world. There were, there were lumps of frozen beef on the block.
Aye, Dewhurst’s, aye.
R – Aye, but the ordinary local butcher got it. But it were the end of the world to village folk when you were eating frozen meat, it were something you didn’t do, anybody that went to t’frozen shop, they were pretty low.
Did you think, do you think that your family were probably fed better during the first world war than they were before?
R- Well I can't remember you see. At ten years old, you see?
I were just wondering whether you had any opinion, you know? Can you think, you say you were eight when the first world war started. You were twelve or else thirteen when it finished and you’ve had time to think since. Obviously it was a great upheaval, can you think of any other ways in which it changed the sort of world that you knew, the first world war.
R- Well, there were. It all sort of went on above your head as a child. There were people being called up and then in a few weeks he's been killed. But it went over your head at twelve and thirteen and fourteen you see. It were in a world apart, and you saw those chaps coming over in their khaki, and the headmaster would have them up at the school, one of the old scholars you know, telling their tales about what happened and how patriotic it were and all that sort of thing. But it just went over your head. There's one thing I can remember, we were sat at home one night, and the gas started going down, they used to reduce pressure on the gasholder when there were Zeppelins about, and it went down and down and down, just left a glow. And happen about
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after half an hour like that, and then it came up again. They must have got out of the vicinity. Such things as that you remember.
Did you ... you talk about Zeppelins, did you ever hear Zeppelins in Skipton?
R - No never. The only Zeppelin that we've seen were when the Graf Zeppelin flew over to America and came back right over Skipton.
Is that right?
R- Yes. Right over the top of Skipton and Carleton from Lothersdale way.
What year were that? Can you remember roughly, before the war or after?
R - No. After the war, after the first world war, when there were the Zeppelin.
But there is one thing, I can remember the first aeroplane I were near to and touched. It came down in a field in the Aire Valley, one dinner time. And they let all the kids out of the school to go and see it. And when we got there the pilot were being violently sick! I can remember that, all down t’side of the aeroplane and you couldn't credit it, all wire and canvas. However they could, however they could fly in such like things. And there were a manager at Slingsby’s mill at Carleton called Braithwaite, he were only a young fellow and he had a big Harley Davidson motorbike, and he set off to see it and he took one of the office men, a chap called Herbert Airton on the back of the motorbike, and he were in such a hurry to get there they skidded at a corner and threw this fellow of and broke his leg. He never walked right after, he were always limping, and that was another thing I can remember. And there were another aeroplane came eventually, the same day, and there must have been a mechanic on it. Anyway, they got it right and then they both set off together and looped the loop. That were the first contact with aeroplanes. And the first motorcar I can remember, a Doctor Kitchen coming from Skipton into Carleton. All brass and brass lamps in t’front and brass radiator. That were the first motorcar.
Up to then of course everything had been horses.
R- Yes. And you used to go gathering it in the road.
Horse muck?
R - Horse muck, aye. You had a wagon you called them, two wheels on,
two iron wheels, you used to get them from the mill and go gathering horse muck and selling it at sixpence a wagonload. And there were such a lot of horses. Slingsby’s had all the coal collected from Skipton station for the Carleton Mill. There were a continual stream of horse and carts all day long, carting coal through Carleton. Then there were the carrier’s carts carting cotton, and everything had to come by road. Well it had to be road all the time but carts, carts and horses.
Things have changed. Thing’s have changed.
SCG/13 February 2003
6,994 words
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 79/AD/03
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 4TH OF JULY 1979 AT 16 COWGILL STREET, EARBY. THE INFORMANT IS HORACE THORNTON, TAPER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Right Horace, some more questions about when you were living in Carleton up to when you were 12 year old. Anyway, your early life. What we are on now is clothing, which can be a very interesting subject. Right, did your mother make any of the family's clothes?
R- Yes, making lad’s trousers out of old trousers she got, cut them down. And she used to knit all of our socks, you know? Well they were knee socks you know, stockings that come up to us knees. And the one sister as I can remember, she used to make all her own clothes. So you were asking was she a milliner, now Amblers must have been dressmaker and milliners because she could do the lot.
That's it, I'd forgotten what her job was, yes.
R - Yes, I think that's what she must have been when she worked at Mrs Ambler’s.
Yes, did she have a sewing machine Horace?
R - Yes and it were a Jones treadle machine.
(50)
Aye, me mother used to work at Jones’s. And so obviously if you tore anything or anything wanted repairing she’d mend clothes as well.
R- Well she did. And she often tells tales about you know, four lads being out, and get to bed time when she were tired out and it were time for bed, and we’d get undressed and she’d he examining our clothes and there’d be all t’back torn out of one of the pair of trousers, beyond repair, so she’d to turn round and sit up while morning side to make us a pair of trousers to go to school in the next morning. And she used to go to rummage sales or what, the second hand sales, and buy old clothes and what could be cut down they were cut down and what weren’t, they were torn up and
made into peg rugs, that's what happened. And we all had to give a hand at pegging rugs.
Tell me, how did you peg rugs Horace? Every time, a number of times people have told me that they have a peg rug in the house. I know how it’s done but people might not just know how it was done.
R – Well, the pricker, we used to get a sheep bone out of a leg of mutton or shoulder of mutton. There'd be a straight bone with a knuckle end on, there's the ball end on and they used to saw it off about that long.
About six or seven inch? Yes.
R- And then grind it down to a point you see. And this knuckle
(100)
piece fit into your hand and make it smooth, went shiny and that's what you used as a pricker. It’d last for ever you know. And if the point end got a bit blunt all you got to do is rub them down a bit on a stone and they were sharp again.
Aye .. And all you did actually, was make a loop of material and push it through the backing.
R - You made a hole and pull one end through, and made another hole and pull the other through in the sacking, we used to call it sacking, canvas they call it now, or Harding, there's another name for it, Harding. But that were all you did, push it through, and you’d to be careful not to break the weft or warp you see else that were no good. You had to push them into the .. make a hole and push the pricker in and then every piece of cloth were cut to a point, the ends are cut on a cross so there's a point on you see, and then you just push one end through and took hold of it underneath and push the other end through and pull them down so as they’re equal.
(5 min)
And you get a piece of crayon round the outside and make a black line on and then you always put a black border and then if you could get any red cloth, what they used to be after was soldiers red uniforms. In those days soldiers wore red tunics, and if they could get hold of those red tunics they were worth their weight in gold, or a lady's red dress; but the soldiers uniforms wore for ever.
Aye.
R- And .. put black and red and then the inside, if you made a diamond pattern, any pattern on, you may pick your colours out, but otherwise it were all mixed colours that the rest of the rug were made on.
(160)
So you worked from the back really.
R - You had a frame, a rugging frame. It were a piece as wide as ever you, well you could have it as wide as you wanted, and mortises at each end, two of them. And you'd two laths that went through and peg holes in, you put a metal peg or a wood peg
in and as you started at one end of the rug you wrapped it on you see? And unwrap the other end then pull it tight and put the peg in and it were always taut.
Yes.
R- You see? And you were working over the roll ... and you’d lay it across two chairs you see. Have it on a chair at that side and on the table, on the table at one side and on a chair at the other, back of a chair. And you sat and worked with your rug in front of you.
Yes, that's it, aye. I know about ten or fifteen year ago round the farms, I tell you what were popular for doing them, nylon stockings.
R – Yes, but they are a bit soft. Peg rugs, if they were done close, the clippings as we call them, stood up you know. And if you put a backing on it, put a sacking lining on, they wore for ever. And if the sacking wore through, replace it with another, they’d wear until, the clippings used to wear down till there were only the knots left. And . that was what you had on the floor and lots of people had just two or three rugs down, hearthrugs as they called them, and t’rest of the floor bare.
That’s it, aye.
R- Stone floors.
Did you ever have any passed on clothes?
R- Yes, relations would pass you clothes on and I remember, perhaps
(200)
you can remember them black suits that were very popular, they were handed down from grandfather to father and to his grandson and they were worn and worn and worn while they went green.
That's it ...
R - But such good cloth. It were like, cloth like boards.
Right serge, weren't it?
R – Well, right fine .. right fine stuff you know that. But I tell you I wore me grandfather's stuff cut down you know?
Yes. People can't understand that nowadays you know. I talk to younger people you know and everybody seems to think nowadays that clothes are something that wear out in a year and they can’t understand people [wearing a suit for years] And I'm not talking about people having a suit that they never wear, I’m talking about people that used to wear suits day in day out for years and years and years.
R - Yes and they didn't wear out.
No they just went shiny didn’t they? That were all.
R - Yes they did, that were it. And blue serge suits…
Flannel .. ?
R - But these, same as these, I've had these a long time they've just gone threadbare.
[Horace was talking about the tweed trousers he had on]
Yes, aye.
R- But the thing is when I'm doing anything about the house I always wear overalls on the top. And .. this has got fairly well plucked going after blackspice, the thorns catching them, you can see…
Aye, aye, that's it, aye.
R - All there, all over the place. That’s what happens to my clothes.
Aye. Oh well, it's .. they’re not very .. it's happened in a good cause Horace!
R- Yes. Oh it is.
Did your mother buy many clothes? Did she buy any clothes at all?
R- Yes. We used to get a suit when we got, well, at my age, we got a suit once a year. Lads got a suit once a year, before Easter.
(250)
When? Yes, were that for the Whit walks?
R – Well, probably, but you had a suit for Easter then. But you put them on
at Sunday afternoon, but you took them off after tea when you went out you see, with the lads, you hadn't to go out in your best clothes. But everybody
(10 min)
tried to have… Well, all t'lads about tried to have new clothes for Easter.
Yes. That's another thing that strikes you when you're looking at old photographs and family groups, especially when you look at some and people can tell you the history of the families . And something that I’ve noticed is that it doesn't matter how poor the family was, they all used to dress up in their Sunday best for this photograph and they did look respectable. And it seemed as though everybody, it doesn’t matter how poor they were, just about everybody had at least one good suit.
R- Yes, you'd a good suit. But now people don't seem to have a suit at all. Jeans… Well I wouldn't have been allowed to go outside the door at Sunday with jeans on. And patched jeans, same as you see, and my wife says to me “I wouldn't have gone outside t’door with you!” And she wouldn't today, with jeans on, patches on and you go away, away into towns, there's nothing but jeans and rag ones as well.
Oh you can go to places, you can go to weddings nowadays and there's people there in jeans.
R- Yes. And at a funeral everybody had to be in black. But that’s…
That's gone be the board yes. What happened to, well, when she did buy clothes, where did she buy them?
R- Well, Co-op. You could go to the Co-op and a tailor in Carleton measured you for t’Co-op. They'd be sent, the orders were sent away to the wholesale and that's how you got your clothes.
Did you ever come across Scotchmen?
R - No we didn't have them round.
(300)
Do you know what I mean when I say Scotchmen?
R – Yes, and a bag man. Yes. I can never remember them being around, they never came to our house but they were probably, would be paying so much a week for the clothes. But in me mother’s case she'd be able to pay so much a week at the Co-op, they got clubs, you'd to get a club card and you paid so much a week and kept on paying so much a week, and then you spent on you wanted.
Very similar to them mail order clubs nowadays, very similar.
R- Yes it is. The Co-op were always club conscious.
What happened to your old clothes.
R- Well a rag man used to come round. Any that you couldn’t use for peg rugs, rag man got that.
What did you get back off the rag man?
R- Well they paid in them days. Now, if I get a sackful of rags, old clothes and there's a rag man coming and I’ll say to him “How much?” “Oh, we don't pay for rags!” Well, I say “You're not having ‘em then.” I just throw them on the rubbish cart.
Aye.
R - They always used to, they always used to pay for rags.
In money?
R - In money, always in money. There were one man, he were an Irishman, he came for years and he had a hand cart and he had a spring balance, and he put your rags into a sack and he weighed them and he paid you for them, so much a pound.
Aye, Can you remember how much?
R- No, but you had some satisfaction that you were getting paid and my mother always used to save all her rags for that chap because she got money and you got weight. But this one, he’ll give you a scouring stone ... Well a scouring stone was something and nothing.
Yes. Have you ever seen them giving salt for old clothes, with a block of salt on the wagon?
R - Well no, but there were Herds from Colne used to come round Carleton with a horse and cart with blocks of salt on. It were called the dry salt of Herds from Colne. Came for years.
Yes. And you could buy a block of salt off him.
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R - Yes, off the cart. It wouldn’t be above sixpence I don’t suppose, for a big block of salt. And then you kept it in the cellar and you used to chop a lump off and break it up and jut it in the salt pot when you, just as you needed it. We’d wooden salt boxes.
And what did you wear for school Horace?
R - Fustian
Aye. Lined?
R- Yes there would be, and jacket, waistcoat and trousers. And you didn’t have handkerchiefs.
(15 min)
Aye that’s it, your sleeve!
R- Yes, on your sleeve.
How about .. I’m very interested in the history of underpants. How about underpants, did you wear underpants?
R - We wore loose, we wore cotton linings and me mother used to unpick them, they were fastened in the trousers but she used to unpick them.
That's it.
R- And wash them you see? They never seemed to get the ideas of having separate underpants, they were always in the trousers.
No ... That's right.
R - And as I got older I went to a tailor at Skipton and he measured me for the suit and then he said “Do you want loose lining, or do you have underpants?” I said “Oh no, I always have them lined.” “Well - he said - it's a dirty way.”
Aye, yes.
R- And I realised then, the difference you see, but it were what we’d always known. I'd perhaps be 14 or 15, just started working.
So that were you converted to underpants? Aye. I’ve always said that .. and mind you a lot of people nowadays can't remember this, but at one time underpants used to have tapes an them. [These were on the waistband which wasn’t elasticised in those days. You slipped the ears of your braces through them before attaching them to the buttons on your trousers. This meant that your shirt always had to be tucked in your underpants.]
R - Yes, but me mother used to make them, you got what they called shed cotton. You went to the mill and said “I want a pound of shed cotton.” and it were one and three pence, and the warehouse manager need to measure so many yards and tear it off, roll it up and that were it. And you made your underpants out of that.
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R - And cotton vests were made out of the same cloth, cotton vests for summer, well they were summer or winter, there were no difference in your attire, winter or summer. And me mother made us shirts, bought shirting and made them and knitted the socks. Of course when you'd no money coming in you had to be self sufficient.
Aye. Tell me something Horace. Can you remember being breeched?
R - Yes because .. I've a photograph somewhere about, a photograph taken at school with all the other scholars and I were in a white pinny and a frock.
Yes, what age?
R - I were under three. We lived quite near the school and me mother having a lot of children, they let the younger un go before they were three. There were a Mr Lily was the headmaster, and he’d two daughters who were school teachers and a Miss Bridge were the teacher at the Infants. And they'd take then at two, just to help the mother a bit. But I have this photograph, a frock and a white pinafore on, and long curly hair, you'd think it was a girl. And then, I can remember my uncle sort of remarking “Oh, you’ve got breeched have you?” See? You see, before that if you wanted to do your business, anything, you just sat down anywhere, you'd no knickers on or anything. You’d just sit down and do it wherever you were, not in the house but outside ...
Yes aye, that’s it. Different days Horace, different days and different customs and they’ve gone now. You know, people just don’t realise. Anyway, we’ll carry on with the questions. What kind of hat did you wear [for school]?
R – Cap, always a cap.
Yes, that’s a cap made up in segments, not a flat cap. Yes?
R – Yes, yes. No.
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And how about your boots?
R - Clogs.
Clogs? Irons?
R - Except Sunday. Irons yes irons. There were two cobblers in Carleton, Smith's and Mawson’s.
What sort of irons, thick or thin?
R – Thick, oh yes, I’d say you wanted…
Colne irons?
[Different districts used to have different styles of irons. There were the common irons, Accrington irons which had a narrower section at the toe, rather like a broad duck’s bill and Colne irons which weren’t ribbed like a normal iron but were solid and heavier. Then there was the option of double irons which wore longer. I wore clogs when I was on the cattle wagons and always had double irons. The cattle heard you coming in ironed clogs and you didn’t get kicked. The reason why I asked Horace whether his clogs were ironed was because a lot of inside workers and women used rubber ‘irons’.]
R- Well, they come from Silsden over our way. It were a great clog iron making shop was Silsden. And they're always thick irons, you wanted to be able to make sparks.
[Horace is referring to the trick of striking sparks with your irons, a regular lad’s trick.]
(20 min)
That’s it. Aye. What would your father wear for work?
R - White fustian trousers, they always wore white fustian trousers did mule spinners to go to work. And I know I can see me mother to this day, if they couldn’t get the black oil marks off, she were scrubbing them and rubbing them with chalk. They wouldn't go, they wouldn’t go to work at Monday morning with dirty oil marks on. You see you were dirty if they turned them out at Monday morning. And then as time went on, what I can remember about them, they all worn cotton trousers you see. They were thick for wear. But they wore then inside, in the mill. White fustian trousers and a lot of the older end, I suppose they were pensioners, they wore white fustian trousers at Sunday, they hadn't anything else.
How about shirts, what sort of shirt?
R - Well me mother bought shirting, we didn't wear shed cotton shirts, she always made the shirts, our shirts.
What were they, Union?
R - They would be Union, same year round, but they used to, it wasn't like flannelette. Union's a twill. Aye
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Yes. That's it, yes.
R - And .. fairly strong were all Union shirts. I don’t suppose that people nowadays would know what you were talking about.
No, generally with a stripe in weren't it, with a thick and thin stripes, narrow stripes. Yes.
R- Yes they were. Yes.
Aye. You can still see them about occasionally.
R - Yes, But they did wear well.
Yes. Of course, Union, it were like wool and cotton mixture wasn't it?
R - Yes but it were all cotton were the shirts we used to wear. It were all cotton. And then Union shirts that were, they'd been raised, more like flannelette weren't they?
That’s it, yes. Aye that's it. What they call now grandad shirts, aye. What kind of hat would your dad wear to work?
R - Billycock. Brother went to work in a Billycock, they did. And in my time since the war, there were a tackler who used to work down here at Johnson’s and he came from Colne and he always came in a Billycock. This is since the war.
Since the second world war?
R- Yes.
What kind of footwear did he wear?
R- Me?
No, your dad.
R – It’d be boots. You see, everybody wore boots, elastic sided boots. Yes. You see… oh well .. roads were such a mess, I can remember.
Aye. Me dad used to call them laughing side boots.
R - Aye. I remember the road when they used to have a scraper, they weren't tarmac. And it were a thing, it dragged on the road, it had all loose sections on it. They dragged it on the road to scrape the mud to the side of the road. That were how the roads were mended. Pot holes, they'd fill them up with a barrow of stones and put some limestone dust on top of them. And then it came to be just in Carleton they were tarmaced, and then it spread out from the villages everywhere. But I remember all these roads over Pinner Moor were all loose stone.
Aye, water bound macadam.
R – Yes.
Now what sort of footwear would he wear when he were working?
R- Clogs, he’d go to work in clogs, take them off and he were bare foot.
Yes. Aye but that's it, yes spinning, he’d spin in bare feet.
R – Yes, bare feet.
Aye. But that wasn't a wood floor was it, at Slingsby’s.
R - Stone floor. Stone floor upstairs like, on the second and third floor were all spinning, the ground floor were the card room.
Yes. Aye, that’s it. Aye, devils, scutchers and cards. Aye. And what would your mother wear?
R- Clogs. She wore clogs all her life.
Yes. And what sort of clothes would she wear for housework?
R – Well, they were always long, you know? Skirt, but as time went on they got to be shorter and more modern.
Did your mother ever go into shorter skirts?
R - Yes but not minis.
Aye. When you say a long skirt Horace, do you mean actually down to the floor or sort of ..
R- Not me mother, not really down to the floor. Down to the floor, my grandmother, she wore them down to the floor and black tight bodices. She were a very stern woman, and a lace cap on her head.
Cap yes.
R- She always, and thin. Oh, she were always very stern..
Aye. Would your mother wear anything different it she went out shopping than she wore to do the housework?
R- She always wore a shawl, a red shawl.
Was there any significance in it being red?
R- No, but if she got a new one she got a red one. Lots of other people wore red shawls or grey ones, but all the people that went to the mill, they all wore shawls.
Would she wear, if she went out to the shop, say she was working in the house and she’d wear an apron wouldn't she? She wore a pinny…
R- Yes.
If she went out to the shop, or if she went out of the house, would she leave that pinny on or take it off?
R- Oh, she'd keep her pinny on. Yes, because in Carleton the Co-op were just across the road, the butcher’s shop were just a bit farther up, and then farther along still, another 50 yards, there were the Post Office and general stores.
Would she wear a hat?
R - Not to go out, not in the village, no never, always the shawl.
Yes.
R - And I don’t think she fastened it, she used to have her arm under it and she’d be holding it.
What were the shawl made of Horace?
R- Same as blankets, wool. They were made same as blankets and with a fringe on. And when they went out with the baby, wrap it round the baby, carry the baby in it.
Yes. And as you get down more into Lancashire a lot of the shawls seem to have been cotton.
R - Always woollen shawls.
Yes, aye. Wool. It's funny, I always remember them as woollen shawls when I was a lad, when I've seen them because I used to see them about then, you know, odd ones you know, after the war. And a lot of them looked as though they were knitted. I can't be certain obviously, I wasn't taking too much notice then, but they seemed to be a very open weave you know?
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R- Well, probably they would be, they did, good knitters would knit them. But these were always woollen shawls like a blanket.
Yes. And your dad mend your shoes or your clogs?
R- I don’t think so. No, I don’t think he would, I can never remember him doing it.
No. Aye. ‘Cause there were two cloggers in the village.
R - Well, clogs .. me mother would say go and get your clogs ironed. You just went and took them and you sat and waited till he did them.
How much?
R - No idea. Because he used to send a bill in when… Oh we didn't pay there and then. I mean anybody in a village, you know whether they’re payers or they aren’t payers and our name must have been good, because…
Aye there you are.
R - You took your shoes, you took your clogs and Richard Smith, Dick Smith they called him. And there were two Richard Smiths in Carleton, one were called Cobbler Dick and the other were called Sizer Dick. You knew which … one were the taper at the mill, sizer, and Cobbler Dick were the shoemaker.
How many outfits of clothes did you have at any one time?
R - Well we’d have what we’d had the year before for knocking about, Saturday afternoons and that, but then you’d a good outfit. You'd to make that last a full year. Out, it were only processions and weddings and Sunday afternoons.
That’s it, Sunday best.
R – Yes, Sunday best.
Well, there is a question here ‘Were any clothes made for you by a dressmaker?’ Yes they were really because your mother used to make most of your clothes.
R- Yes.
(30 min)
Have you over come across such a thing as people sewing children in for the winter?
R- Never.
Never come across it.
R – Never.
Have you ever heard of it?
R - Well, probably I will. have heard of or read about it but never to my knowledge.
It’s something I’ve never come across. Did you, well you’ve already said that your mother did really belong to a savings club for clothing because she'd probably be in a club at the Co-op wouldn’t she?
R- Yes.
What kind of clothes would the spinner wear? When I say spinner I mean the bloke in charge of the wheel gate, you know, in charge of the spinning, his foreman. What was the right name? Was he the spinning master?
R- Overlooker.
Overlooker aye. Well, now what .. ?
R - They were all overlookers.
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Yes. What sort of clothes would he wear?
R - White coat and white trousers. A white jacket the same as it might be a baker, or a painter. But always the white trousers and the white jacket.
He wouldn't have bare feet, he’d wear shoes wouldn’t he that fellow?
R- Yes, because he wasn’t there all the time see?
Yes, that's it. How about…
R- Hat?
Aye.
R- Well, it’d be a billycock.
Aye, it would be wouldn't it, nearly sure. Would you say that, did you see a difference in clothes after the first world war?
R- Well, they got more modern but you see there were ring spinners, they were all women, and they went in clogs and shawls same as the women in the village wore. But there were a difference in [the village]. There were two sorts of women in the village, there were ever so many big houses round Carleton, and the village lads married the servants. And the servants were always dressed up, you never saw them going out in anything but shoes, you know, aping the masters. And they always considered themselves a bit superior to the village people. But there were quite a lot you see, there were one, two, three, four .. about five big houses in Carleton and there’d be an endless procession of servants, and I can remember ‘em to this day. You could tell them who’d been in service, because they dress differently and talk differently. You see they'd come from the South of England perhaps, a lot of them and they spoke different to us. But they never, they never wore clogs, they always wore shoes and never wore a shawl they were always dressed up.
Yes. would you say that we’re getting into a sort of class distinction here, that clogs and shawls were .. and I dare say white fustian pants and all, were equated with mill workers.
R- Probably.
Let’s put it this way, lower working class people. I don't like labels, social classes, at all, but I mean, I find that doing this sort of work I’m forced to use them. At that time, did you ever give any thought to things like that? I mean I noticed the way you
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said that they [the servants] never wore clogs. I mean, did you realise that there was really a sort of a reason for that.
R- Well, you wondered who they were, and same as me mother’d explain how it were that they were always different, “Oh, she were a servant for Slingsby’s” you see? I could mention quite a lot now you see that were servants, you could pick them out. But you see there were only really two classes of people, there were farm labourers and mill workers at Carleton, and then a few railway men.
What kind of clothes were you wearing in the 20’s? Now lot's see, 1920's you’d be?
R- Eighteen.
Eighteen year old, that's it, aye. So now you'd be….
R - Yes aye, aye 1906.
You'd be earning a little bit of money.
R – Yes. Well, when I started work, when I were 12, half time and I were doffing, that were 1920, round about then, and wages wore high then. And I knew doffers with £2 a week or over.
Aye.
(35 min)
R - That's doffers, and spinners and, well, I don’t know about spinners, I didn't know the wage .. but weavers were making three and four pounds then for a short period. And then the slump came.
That were it.
R- And it were working and playing, working and playing and you had to take a reduction in your wages. They'd come out on strike, you’d be out a few days and then they’d settle it for a 10% reduction. It were never for a 10% rise, a 10% reduction.
No, well, I'll have a lot of questions about that later Horace. What I’m thinking about now was, I’ll trigger you off, I mean … did you ever own a pair of Oxford bags?
R - No never.
Never.
R- I were never .. I couldn't have gone out in them, I wouldn't have done, my clothes hadn’t to be outlandish, they’d just to be the ordinary thing, nothing out of the ordinary. For a long while I had a job .. well I didn't wear lighter coloured clothes, it were blue serge suits and a bowler hat, stiff collar. Because we were brought up to go to church Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon for Sunday school and the church at night because all on me father’s side, they were very religious people because they'd always been connected with the church verger and we all had to go, everybody went.
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One or two lads didn't go, well they were beyond the pale that didn't go to the church or to Sunday school. And Carleton Feast were a big day, everybody walked and the band playing and the people walked round and you walked round to the big houses, sang a few hymns and got lemonade dished out to you or an apple or an orange. We went all round the village. They always seemed to be glorious summer days ... First Saturday in July it always were, well, first Saturday nearest the fifth, that were Carleton Feast, and .. banners flying. Big banner at t’front and smaller banners all along the line. But you started off and went to the Grange, Carla Beck, Ravenshaw, then came back to the vicarage and then over Carleton, played at one or two shops. Beech Hill, that was a big house, Dale Garth that was another big house, round Carleton, back to the school for half past four and a sit down tea. And then a gala at night and prizes and prize giving and the rest of it. That made your day.
Aye .. And that’d be when you had your new suit. Aye.
R- Yes. Well, you'd put it on but you’d take it off for the sports.
Aye. Now then, family life in the home. Did everyone sit down for their meals together?
R- Yes, when we were all at home, before we started working. But me mother always had her tea near on the dot at four o’clock, that was school leaving time. When you got home your tea were ready, then you'd a free night.
Yes. Now your dad wouldn't have finished work then.
R- No, half past five.
So he'd eat on his own.
R- Yes. Did your parents have any rules about your behaviour at the table? You know, were they at all strict about it.
R - Well, you just took your cue off anybody else. You see. I mean you don't know, you’re just young and learn off the older ones and that’s where it is.
Did you use to, did you sit at the table?
R - Oh yea, big square table you know, all sat round the table.
Did you know anybody in the village whose children didn't sit at the table?
R- No, you didn't go into people's houses at meal time and stay there and watch them having their meals.
(40 min)
Aye. That’s it aye. Have you any idea what I’m driving at with that question? Round here you know, Earby and Barnoldswick, I don’t know how much further afield it went, but up to about 1920 it
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was very common, you'd find a lot of families where children, after they’d got out of the high chair stage, never sat down at the table again until they were starting to work. They used to stand at the table and eat.
R- No, I never heard that.
Never come across this?
R- No.
That was very, very common in Earby and Barnoldswick. Very common.
R - Never heard of that.
Yes, you want to ask Fred Inman about that sometime, Fred’ll tell you. Yes, I was surprised when I found out but it's extremely common round here. Were your parents strict about things like times for coming in at night or being cheeky or swearing?
R - When we were young we had to be in early, we hadn't to be out after dark and we’d to be in bed by nine o’clock. Like those that were being bathed were bathed first and went and we’d to be in bed for nine o'clock.
What .. if you did do something wrong, say you'd been told to be in for eight o’clock or whatever it was, and you didn’t come in .. apart from a good telling off, I mean if your mother or your father decided to punish you, how did they punish you?
R- Well, I can’t remember. I can only remember being thrashed with me dad once, I’d been cheeky to me grandmother. She’d told me mother and me mother told me dad and I were lashed under the table with a strap and it were his razor strop. That's the only time I ever had a hand laid on me.
Is that right?
R - Yes. But when me dad died we always obeyed me mother, we never disobeyed her. It were funny like, four lads and a girl and we always looked after her. She never got cross, never bad tempered, I don't know how ever she did it because we were young devils. I can see it back now.
Did the family, well you said that they were fairly religious, did they have grace before meals?
R- No. No.
No. Any prayers at home?
R - No.
Prayers going to bed?
R- Yes, we always had to kneel down and say our prayers before we got into bed, you see?
Yes, Yes. Would you do that all together?
R- Well if one or two of us went to bed and me mother stayed with the younger end. They did it, put them into bed, but as we got older we went to bed together but we always said our prayers.
How long did you carry on doing that, Horace? Or I mean, for all I know you might still do it, but I mean ..
R- No. I don’t now but me sister does it yet, and she is 67 or 68.
Yes. If you had a birthday, was it different than any other day? You know, did you have presents or a party, or visitors?
R- No, no party, no visitors.
Presents?
R- No. ‘Many happy returns’
That's it.
R- And me mother said to us “It’s your birthday today” We didn’t bother right? I’d one aunt that wasn't married and she’d quite a lot of nieces and nephews, but when we were 21 we all got a present off her, I got a prayer book and a walking stick and I have them yet.
Prayer book and a walking stick? Yes.
R- Yes. At twenty one.
SCG/16 February 2003
6,501 words
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 79/AD/04
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 4TH OF JULY 1979 AT 16 COWGILL STREET, EARBY. THE INFORMANT IS HORACE THORNTON, TAPER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Now then Horace, we'll go straight on with family life. What do you remember about Christmas when you were a lad?
R – Well, the usual thing we got were apple and orange, and a few nuts but no presents when we were very young. Me sister’d probably get a doll but we didn't get anything at all only plenty of food. It were always a big occasion at our house were Christmas because all the relations lived round about, and they came to our house in turn and we went to theirs. I’d an uncle and aunt lived next door, we always went to their house and they come to ours. And an aunt and uncle that was unmarried, they came and had Christmas dinner with us, and probably tea, and we were all there. And then as the family
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grew up in the latter years over 20 sat down to dinner at Christmas day, and tea, and supper as long as me mother lived. And since me mother died it's always been kept up. And through the war years we always managed to be at home for Christmas, you see. But we never went anywhere, we’d never, only to relations, we’d never any other engagement at Christmas time, we always kept this as a family party.
How about Easter, was that a holiday at Easter?
R – Yes, but you see, with being church people Easter were always acknowledged, or recognised you see, you didn't do anything Good Friday only go to church, and if we were working, well we didn't do because Good Friday wasn’t a holiday round us, it were Easter Monday you see?
Yes.
R - Some firms laiked Friday and played Saturday and Monday, and others played at Friday and, and .. have I got it the wrong way about? But the people that worked Friday played Monday that's the way it were.
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Yes, that’s it. Did you ever have pace eggs?
R – Yes, we ..well we used to boil them in coffee, and put pieces of orange, onion skin on, stick them on and that kept the coffee dye from going on to them, you could make all sorts of patterns. And boil them hard, then nobody ate them, you never eaten them, you played about with them and, then threw them away. We didn't eat them. But I know we used to have fun, we’d be boiling these eggs and dyeing them and drawing on with them with indelible pencil. But they were never eaten, we’d just a bit of fun and we didn't have chocolate Easter eggs.
Aye. Were there any musical instruments in the house?
R - Yes. Me father must have been able to play it, a clarinet. There were always a clarinet so he must have been a musician at one time. It were always about. And then I had a brother, when he got older he joined Carleton brass band, and he got it, he used to play it but not in a band, he just played it as a hobby. And then a daughter of his, they formed a school band and it went into the school band and it’ll be still there. If it’s still whole and hearty it’ll be in some school band round about Carleton or Skipton, school orchestra.
Aye. And remember, musical instruments can include lots of things you know. How about ...
R- Well we had a zither. Somebody came round Carleton hawking them. Selling them very cheap and they supplied, I think one half of the houses in Carleton had a zither.
Aye. Now that’s interesting. Can you remember where that was made?
(5 min)
R- Well, I couldn't tell you but they were foreign, it were foreign language on it, it wore about this big, laid flat on the table [indicates two feet long], and you had an article to pluck the strings with. And of course we played with it and broke them and tighten them up, you know, you'd a key to turn them. Well we’d tighten and tighten till [they broke] but eventually it' d go to the tip, that's what happened to the zither.
Aye. How about things like mouth organs, Jews Harp?
R- Well, no Jews harp but we used to get mouth organs. I went to the
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sea side with my father, I’d be only young, and I got a mouth organ bought. It were at Morecambe, and I got a mouth organ. And it still sticks in my mind, it had a couple of bells on and you could flick this thing and the bells rang and I would have this mouth organ. I can remember me father wanted me just to buy a smaller one that were more simple but I would have this with the bells on.
Good salesman that designed that. He must have been. Did any of you sing?
R- No, not brothers and sisters, I had a nephew who were in Carleton church choir.
Aye .. Did you ever have a sing song at home?
R – No. Not when we were younger. Eventually me mother bought me sister a piano to learn to play the piano and Christmas time we used to have a sing song, me sister’d play carols and hymns and songs. We still have the piano. Aye, it's a good one, a German over strung. Never played, only at Christmas times.
Were there any, did you use to play any games in the house? You know, either with your parents or without your parents?
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R - Well, a favourite of me mother's were Ludo. She’d sit up day and night playing Ludo. And then we got on to card games as we got older but my aunt that was religious, unmarried, it were immoral to play cards. Aye, it were.
Aye .. The devil's prayer book. Ever heard that phrase Horace?
R - Yes. And to go, drilled into us not to go to the Liberal Club or the Conservative Club. Oh no. And still me father were the Secretary of the Conservative Club. And he had medals for being Secretary, long service.
Oh. His sister didn't think much of that then, his sister in law?
R - No, his sister. Aye. And they were a right Conservative family. Aye, true blues. Well, they were either true blues or true liberals in those days.
Yes, that’s it, aye.
R - And there were both a Conservative Club and a Liberal Club and there is neither now in Carleton.
Did the family have a regular newspaper?
R – No, not after me father died.
Well, how about before your father died?
R – Well, I couldn't really remember, I couldn't.
How about a regular magazine? Did your mother get a woman's magazine?
R – Well, in a village there is a lot of swapping goes on. You’d buy one and you swap it round till, and get perhaps half a dozen others in its passage round.
Yes.
R - And we’d always get the Craven Herald. See, Conservative paper.
Aye.
R - And then eventually the Pioneer were the Liberal paper ...
Yes, I were going to say there was two papers in Skipton then weren’t there?
R - And then they amalgamated you see. And it’s the Craven Herald and Pioneer. But we always had the Craven Herald but not a daily
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(10 min)
paper. Until, it’d be after the war. They came round pressing us to take a daily paper.
This’d be after the first world war.
R- No, second world war.
Second world war.
R - Daily Herald were the great persons [sic]. They took so many, took this paper for so long and then you got a dictionary or something like that. And we used to change every time they came round with a fresh, a better offer.
Did any of the family… Oh, now, wait a minute, the newspapers or the magazines. Can you ever remember seeing anything like a woman's magazine in the house, you know, Woman's Weekly* or ..
R - Woman's Weekly, but we used to get it from round next door.
Yes. How about things, now I'm not sure when these started Horace, but how about things like Arthur Mee, you know the Children Newspaper, things like that, did you ever have them?
R- We didn’t but me uncle [Fred] next, in the next street, he had a nephew living with him from Australia, [This would be Geoffrey] and they always used to get the Children Newspaper, Arthur Mee, and I used to go there and read them all.
How about … Can you ever remember seeing the Clarion?
R- No never, not in a Conservative household.
Never. That's it. Yes.
R- Oh never, no Clarion.
Can you remember when the Clarion was on the go though?
(350)
R- I remember faintly. Aye, faintly.
Aye. Now, we get on to politics later, it's interesting. Was there, did any of the family belong to a library? Was there a library in Carleton?
R - There were a village library.
Yes.
R- but there were a lot of old books, old fashioned books and I used to go and get them. There were Jules Verne and his ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea’ and ‘Round the World in Eighty Days’ and the Boys Own Paper you see? And uncle Fred who wasn't married and lived with his sister in the next street, Mary Alice, he used to take a lot of books, ‘Farm, Field, and Fireside’ that were gardening. And he’d all sorts of hobbies, bookbinding were one of them. And there’d be the attic, same as we had and he'd all sorts up there, it were a right Aladdin’s cave aye. He went in for photography, bookbinding, all sorts, he kept hens, gardening, territorially(?) all hobbies. And I used to go and help him and then he'd all these bound volumes that 1 could go look at. He used to do the lot, it were very interesting.
Aye. Was there anybody in the family who didn’t read or write? Anybody that was illiterate?
R - No.
How about books in the house, at home, apart from library books? Were there some books about, you know, or…
(400)
R – There’d be books about, but they’d be old fashioned ones, there'd be
no up to date ones.
When you say they'd be old fashioned ones, can you remember any of the titles?
R – No. Tom Brown’s Schooldays, that sort of thing.
Aye. Did you have any toys? As we think of toys nowadays, you know, like Meccano, whatever it was ?
R - No we didn't. No we didn’t have toys, but as I say I could always go into the next street, this cousin of mine that had come from Australia. You see his aunt and uncle they bought him all sorts of things, and we used to go there and play with him. Meccano sets and he seemed to get everything. See there were only one and whether they got his father's money… I suppose they would.
Yes, quite possibly for looking after the child.
R - And it’d be spent, it’d be spent on him.
Yes. If your mother had any spare time when she was at home, what would she do with it? What would she do in her spare time?
R - Well I know one thing we used to do on fine days in Summer. They used to go into what they called Eddie’s Woods, Mr Eddie owned the Grange and there were a lot of woods around, happen , there were two, part at the bottom of this wood and two arms happen a mile long, each of them.
(15 min)
And we'd go across the fields, through the gate, and climbed the wall gathering firewood. And me mother and all of us’d go and gather firewood and carry it home and chop it up and stack it up in the back yard for Winter. And use it for baking, pushing logs under the fire oven.
(450)
She always said she could bake better with wood. Though you’d always to be putting it on, it didn't last long. If you could get any oak, that were the stuff for lasting and burning.
If your father had any spare time, what would he do?
R - Fishing. He used to take me with him fishing into the canal. We used to go through the fields and come out at Niffany.
Would you say that was his overriding hobby?
R - Hobby? Yes. Well, when you worked five and a half days a week and he’d have a garden and then he were the verger at the church and that included cleaning it and Sunday going to the service and tending to the boiler. I mean, I don‘t see that he had much spare time.
Aye. Now that’s something, that’s another thing that I want your opinion about in a while. What time would you get up in the morning, a normal morning going to school say. What time would you get up?
R – Well, half past eight, twenty minutes to nine, because we'd only a few yards to go to the school.
Aye? So late. Your mother’d be up earlier?
R - Oh she’d be up to see me father off to work at six and then start with the washing, half past five.
Aye. What time did you go to bed? Children?
R - Well, it’d vary, seven o’clock, eight o’clock. But I can remember I had to be in bed, in the house, when I grew up a bit, I had to be definitely in the house by nine, there were no stopping out. And after dark .. after dark and in winter you didn’t go out, there were nothing to go out for. We hadn't to frequent the Clubs and you hadn’t to run wild.
Run wild, aye. With everything that entails. What time did your parents go to bed?
R- I couldn't tell you.
Didn't know.
R - No.
Did you have any pets?
R- Only one, a rabbit. And we were close to some gardens and it got out one night then escaped. And me mother’d been wandering around them gardens, got up right early at the morning seeking it. She laid in bed and imagined that this one rabbit, the garden would be bare. And she went wandering round these gardens to find it, and she spotted it there, a chap had caught it and shut it up in his greenhouse. So we got it back, but we hadn’t to have no more after that.
What happened to it when it reached the end of its course?
R - Oh we wouldn't eat it. No, we could get enough rabbits without eating the pet.
Did anyone in the family smoke?
R – Well, we've all done intermittently, but never a lot. And me oldest brother never did, he never did smoke but I did part and me other brothers. And one of them smokes heavily now, me youngest brother.
How about your dad?
R - Oh, he smoked a pipe. Aye, it were always pipes.
Twist?
R - I couldn't say.
How about your mother?
R- Never. No, never smoked.
Did anyone in the family ever back the horses, you know, gamble?
R – No, I had a uncle that did, an uncle on me mother’s side. He were quite keen, he were a farmer. He were a batchelor him, he were all right. But he did back horses.
Can you remember when the family had its first radio?
R - Well I think everybody had a wireless before we did. I do, I think everybody. We’d be the last person to get one, me mother, with always
(550)
being short of money she were naturally cautious. But we bought one second hand. The church organist, a man called Percy Malton, he used to live at Skipton and he came on to Carleton playing the organ and taught me sister
(20 min)
piano lessons. And he landed up one day, somebody that had a wireless to sell, batteries you know, accumulator and it were only three or four pound I think and we got that. But that were the first wireless we had, I knew everybody else had. I’d stand outside listening to people's radios. But not us and we never pressed for anything you see. We obeyed me mother, we didn’t say “Why can't we have a wireless?” If we had pestered we’d have got one, but we didn’t.
Would you say your mother was a very strong woman? You know, strict woman, stern…?
R – No, she… far from being stern. She must have been strong, strong as a horse to bring our crowd up. And go out cleaning and washing and ironing.
Yes. Would you say .. looking back, obviously this is with hindsight, but what would you say the condition of women like your mother was in those days? I mean for instance, one of the questions that I've asked is whether your father ever did any jobs in the house. I mean nowadays it’s quite usual, in some cases the woman goes out to work and the fellow stays at home and looks after the children. Now, try and tell me what… Well, I apologise for that, that’s being impudent that, you’re very capable of telling me. Tell me what your impressions were of women’s station in life. You know, during your younger years?
(600)
R- Well, you never gave it a thought. You, knew the people that went out to work, you knew the people that didn't go out to work, but you didn't reason why and you didn’t reason what they did or what they didn’t do. But my oldest brother, his wife had had a baby and she had rather a rough time of it and she'd a prolapse. She wasn’t well after that and he did the housework, main of it. And we seemed to think he were a cissie like, it was something that weren't done.
Yes.
R - Doing the housework when he came home from work at night, but we didn't reason why, we didn't know that she, that she was [poorly] The idea was that she was a bit lazy, putting on him as they call it. ‘Puts on him’ but we realised after, she wasn’t fit to do the work because she were very frail. But anybody else, you 'd see the man doing the windows and you'd to say he were a Mary Ann. You see? “He’s a right Mary Ann doing t’windows outside and shaking the mats.”
Aye. That’s it.
R – But they'd a right [duty] to do when the wife were out running four looms as they did in those days.
Well, you and I understand what you mean, but in those days how many…? I get the impression, doing these tapes that really, women had a very rough life. They had a very hard life, especially women that worked in the mill. I mean, many a time I ask the question “What did your mother do in her spare time in the home?” And whoever’s speaking to me laughs and says she never had any spare time you know? How common do you think that was Horace?
R- In our case there were never a job for us to do when we came home from working, there were never anything to do. She never said “Will you do this?” or '”Will you do that?” But as she got older we did used to do things, unasked you see? There were a day for doing windows but we’d do it at Thursday night
(650)
Instead of leaving it till Friday you see, so as it were done for her. And
then she'd say “You don't put enough water on you know, you’ve left them streaky!”
Aye, but even so you'd done ‘em.
R - Yes.
But would you say on the whole that women did have a hard life?
R - Well, they all had. A cousin of mine, lower down the street, she were married and her husband were weaving and she went out weaving as well. And she put the child out to mind. And she told me that they were making about, they couldn't make a pound a week weaving then. That'd be first world war because she were a lot older than me. And she said that she worked all week and what she had to pay out for one thing and another, she'd a shilling left for working the whole week. Getting up at half past five and taking t’child out and leaving her there all day and paying for Libby’s Food [baby milk] She’d a shilling left for a week’s work. Sixteen shilling a week weaving at Slingsby’s you see? It were cheap stuff, all export stuff, thin stuff you know, heavy sized, 100% sizing. Aye. China clay.
Yes. Aye, of course the cloth’d still be sold by weight then wouldn’t it?
R - Yes it were. And they got to get the weight, it were one thing that taper had to do were to get his weight.
Aye that’s it. Don't go on too much about that because that is something you are going to get pumped about later! But .. you're quite right. I mean that, well, I mean you know that as well as I do, I mean that was a terrible thing, heavy sizing.
R - Yes.
Now, social life outside the home. Where did you usually play outside the house? You know, if you were playing out, where would it be?
R - In the streets in Winter time and Summer nights. And then holiday time in Carleton Ghyll, it were a free for all what they call it, we called it Ghyll but if you read any books it's Glen. They talk about Carleton Glen, but we called it Ghyll. There was a disused corn mill there. It’s
(700)
still there. The wheel’s been taken out but in my younger days the dam were there and the corn mill were there. And we’d put the clough [sluice gate] down and fill it up and then set the wheel on. And then in Summer time these corn mill dams, we went bathing in them.
Yes.
R - You see they’d be about a yard deep perhaps, quite safe, it were safer than the river. You seep you got one stern warning when you were kids, ‘Keep away from the river!” So you went up the Ghyll, and you'd get old sacking fastened together and have a tent, make a fire, roast potatoes, tickling trout in the beck, you’d a real old time playing cowboys and indians.
Aye.
R – Aye. All your pals, you knew where they'd be, up the Ghyll.
Aye you've said something interesting there, cowboys and indians. Can you actually remember playing cowboys and indians up there?
R - Yes. Aye and you took different sides and .. oh aye.
Where did the idea for that come from? What had put that idea into your head, you know, was it reading comics or …?
R - Comics and pictures. You’d go to the pictures for a penny.
Yes, well we’ll get round to the pictures and all that in a minute or two. Now who did you play with? And really, one thing that goes with that is, was there anybody that your mother didn't like you to play with?
R - Not in a village. You are all as one in a village, you all play together in your age group, a year or two either way, a whole gang of you. You all went together, twelve or thirteen years and what have you. In a gang, and then the next age group, three or four year older you see, they were like men at t’side of you that were three or four year older and you didn't play with the kids half your age.
Apart from cowboys and Indians what sort of games would you play?
R- Well, on winter nights when we were out we used to be hiding you know. We used to give ‘em so much start and then you had to find them. In people's front gardens and in the church yard, and anywhere. And you had boundaries where you hadn’t to go further afield.
Yes. That’s it. How about, you know, the usual childhood things like whip and top, hoops, skipping, marbles.
(750)
(30 min)
R- Yes, always in the main street. Marbles, and there were some gardens opposite the public house at Carleton. There was a grass bank up there and that were always where you made your chuck hoils [holes] as you'd call it up this grass bank. And you were playing Buck and Billy on the, in the road. And there were a particular favourite spot, a manhole grate. You played Buck and Billy on. Iron you know, and it were a bit raised and you could just put your buck on the edge and whack it, whack it up into the air and then strike it and then run. That were before the days of motorcars.
Yes, that would be something like, sort of a juvenile version of Knurr and Spell wouldn’t it.
R - Yes, but we always called it Buck and Billy. But it were the Knurr and Spell idea.
Yes. Did you every come across that up in Carleton? You know, Knurr and Spell?
R- No, never Knurr and Spell. But I know there were a lot of quoits played. At any gala, Co-op gala, or Carleton Feast or the Conservative gala. They all had tea parties and galas, and they always, men played quoits and throwing at wicket, that sort of thing and hop skip and jump, all t’village sports. And tug of war .. there were t’same thing, we always had a band to give a bit of enjoyment to the scene, a bit of dancing.
Aye. Of course really we’re back at Carleton Feast now aren't we.
R – Yes.
Did they have a bowl for a pig?
R- No.
No. That’s farther down the South you know. It used to be a fairly common thing, prize wore a piglet you know, a weaner. And like that were a good prize like because you could put it in the sty, feed it up and finish up with enough bacon to keep you going for winter.
R- Yes.
Did you go out collecting stuff? Well, there you are, blackberries, blackspice.
R- Tewitt eggs. [dialect name for a curlew]
Tewitt eggs.
R- Mushrooms, pulling rabbits out of wall bottoms. And in summer, there were any amount of hens kept you know. Every farmer had some and you went round hedge side looking for hen nests, laying away you see, they did lay away in that weather. Oh, any amount of hen nests and eggs, take the eggs home and “You haven’t stole these have you?” “No, we found them!” We did find them, or I suppose the farmer would have found them if we hadn’t. And we used to be down looking under the hen cotes, that were like a favourite place for looking, but farmers weren’t fussy about eggs.
(800)
How about collecting sticks, firewood, you know anything like that?
R- Well I mentioned that before. We used to go out, bundles of them and then saw them up, chop them up, we’d have the back yard stacked high with them. We always used to take the clothes line with us because the best sticks are those that have died and stayed on the tree. We used to tie a stone on at the end and throw it over the branches and then twist it round you know and pull them off. They were real uns, so dry, as dry as tinder they were.
Aye that’s it, yes. Aye they would be. Your father was a fisherman wasn’t he.
R- Yes.
Now what did he do with the fish? He’d throw them back wouldn’t he?
R - We ate them.
Oh you ate them, did you?
R- Of course we ate them, we didn't throw fish back.
Aye. What sort did he catch?
R- Well, there’s very few trout in the canal, there’d be perch and roach but it were great .... I think they take them fish home whether they tasted right or wrong and we’d eat them you see, it were ‘Caught a fish!” And with being the secretary of the Conservative Club, Walton Morrison up at Malham Tarn he had a boat on the Tarn and father used to get permission to go up there, up to Malham Tarn fishing. And I remember one time he didn’t take me, I were too young, but he took me older brother, and they didn’t get any fish but they come back with a pillowcase full of mushrooms. They’d taken a pillowcase for the fish, they got no fish but mushrooms.
Did your father ever go out at night?
R - Yes I think so. Me own idea, I think every night he went to the public house for a drink. I think he did, but you see he died when I were ten, it sort of …
Yes, understandable Horace. Did your mother go out in her spare time at all?
R- Well, it’d only be to neighbours, but we weren't left in the house at night not when we were young. No never. She’d be sat knitting, she were always knitting, eh she could knit and read. Needles clicking away.
Did she knit with a knitting stick or with full needles?
R – The four needles with stockings. Knit all the stockings.
Yes but I mean full needles, you know, long needles.
(850)
R – No, them little short steel ones.
Yes, did she use a knitting stick?
R – No, she didn’t, she could hold them in her hand and she’d push one in her belt, she’d wear a belt but never a knitting stick. But she could knit.
Have you ever seen a knitting stick used?
R- I've seen them but I haven't seen them used. There’s been plenty of talk about knitting sticks in the Dalesman ...
Well, there has, aye ... but the funny thing about knitting sticks is that I've never come across anybody who saw one used. I begin to wonder a bit about knitting sticks.
R – Well, there is a woman next door, she has relations, they are a Garsdale family, Garsdale.
Yes, you were telling me, Hattie(?) yes.
R - Yes. She tells she has a cousin that had several about, knitting sticks, and now people from away come up into Dales buying a cottage for week ends, cottages. They've begged all them knitting sticks off her you see, she's just given them. Right generous person same as she gave me the white stones.
Aye, donkey stones. That's it, aye.
R- Donkey stone. You see.
Did your mother and father ever go out together?
R- I don't think so unless they took us took us with ‘em, but I remember one trip we went to Morecambe and I can remember only one. We all went. And there’s a thing stuck in my mind .. I told you about getting the mouth organ ...
Yes.
R- We went for a trip on a boat, sailing boat, round the bay and back for tea but it was just an ordinary boat, not a motor boat it’d be a wind driven boat. And they come into these low, back to these low piers at Morecambe and I can remember before we got to the side, came up against the pier, there were a young woman so eager to get off as the boat were going like, she stepped out and went down in between the boat [and the pier]. And I can remember it to this day seeing her floating in the water, and the man just leaned over and grabbed her and pulled her on board. And that's about what I can remember about that trip to Morecambe .. the mouth organ and this…
And this woman falling in the water.
R- Falling in.
Well she had a dip anyway.
R - Yes she did.
Now did you go to church regularly?
R – Regularly, we had to do. My father was sat there in the verger’s seat. We’d to go and he took us, and he saw that we did go.
No getting out of it.
R - No getting away from it.
Which one, which church?
R - Church of England, St Mary’s..
Yes. And everybody in the family went?
R - Oh yes, they had to do.
And Sunday school as well?
R - Sunday school twice a day, nine o'clock at Sunday morning till ten. Then you went to the church and you came out at twelve. And then it were
(900)
two o’clock at Sunday afternoon till four. They knew where you were and there were men teachers for t’lads at Sunday school, and if you didn't behave they'd bang you over the head with the bible, give you, give you such a bang.
Aye.
R- I can remember this here teacher .. there were Robert Smith, Edward Ridley and Gorrill Bargh, Gorrill Bargh, ,that’s a right biblical name isn’t it?
It is aye.
R - And he had a hand as big as a shovel that Gorrill. Talk about knocking you off your chair.
Did they ran the star system? Star cards?
R- No, you got marks. You got marks and then at Carleton Feast there were prizes for the best attendance.
That’s it, best attendance.
R- yes, right.
Were there any social events connected with the church?
R- Yes, there were the Girls Friendly Society, they were always running concerts. And it depended what sort of a vicar you had whether he were interested in garden parties. They ran whist drives in winter and a Christmas social. And there were socials what they called a social and the vicar paid for it all. He invited the congregation, that was for the parents you see and anybody who attended church, and it were a right proper do, a sit down meal. See, there were a Mr Renardson there at that time and he were a wealthy man ...
Mr…?
R - Renardson
Yes.
R- He were a wealthy man. And Carleton church were one of the best livings in Craven. It was £17 a week say in 1900, 1910. Now £17 a week clear, it were a lot of money.
It was.
R - He always had a couple of servants and a gardener you see? And then he’d all the perks, weddings and funerals .. but he were a wealthy man in his own right you see? And he were doing all sorts and there’d be a choir trip,
(40 min)
for the choir. Have a trip off to Blackpool or up into the Lake District, that were a favourite place. And he used to hire, they could hire a saloon on the railway …
That’s it.
R - And you all sat all round, table down the middle. But they were saloons not a corridor train.
That's it, yes, I know what you mean, a saloon coach.
R- A saloon coach.
Like a Pullman nearly, aye.
R- Yes. And he paid for everything, that were the choir treat, and Sunday school teachers, they all went you see. Mr Renardson used to pay for them.
(950)
Old fashioned does Horace.
R - Yes. And singing, if ever you, in those days if you went up to Windermere at Easter there were choirs singing all over the place. You know when you go down to Bowness there is all that open ground all over the place, there’d be choirs singing. But not now.
Yes. What sort of people would you say went to that church? We're getting into the social class thing again slightly here but what sort of people went to church?
R- Well, there were Wesleyans and there were Methodist Church, Chapel, in Carleton they called them Methodist and Church of England, that's all there wore. Well, the big houses all had their separate pews, that were Emerson’s pew, and that were Carla Beck pew, and that wore Raymond Short pew. And they were there and all the servants, perhaps the cook wouldn’t be there or they might have it cold at Sunday.
Aye.
R- But all their servants had to be at the church at Sunday. You see, they’d fill quite a lot. And then everybody else that were Protestant went both Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon. And a good choir, choir stalls were full. Well I don’t think they can raise a choir now.
Aye. You've heard some people describe other people as being, you know, Methodist, you know, Methodists [as a pejorative term] you know, things like that. Would you think that there's any justification for that? On the whole were people who went to chapel more, how shall we say, puritanical. You know, more strict and
moral than those that went to the C of E ?
R - I don’t think so. I don’t think so. No, I don’t think there were any difference.
Did people seem to mix well?
R - They mix well in a village, they mix well.
Yes. But at the church in particular.
R- Oh yes, everybody were the same to one another, whether they were from the big house or who they were. You just talked to them man to man. I mean, it didn't make, there were no class distinction in the village, none whatever.
Of course you realised that you were on, say, a lower plane of life or whatever you like to call it, lower social station than say somebody from one of the big houses.
R- Yes, but you all, in a village you all depend on one another for ideal living or anything that goes on, if you don't muck in. As I said well, that’s it, there’s nothing doing if they’re at loggerheads, so they just all attend and all help. And if there’s a collection round the village for the church, always get a good response. And any of them tea parties there were no bought stuff. You just went round the village collecting, asking wives what they'd do, Butcher would give a big lump
(1000)
of beef you see. And another butcher’d give beef, and all the women folk baking bread and cakes and then they had tables, people who asked to have a table, and they sat at the head of the table and filled the cups of tea. And you had, they had Sunday school teachers and the choir girls and scholars waited on the people. Everybody went.
Sounds like a very, very tight, close knit community. It seems a nice place to live.
R - It were, it were. There were no new houses. You know what I mean? No, they weren't building new houses and people’d come that were absolute strangers. The only people that came in were people out of Lancashire that came working to Slingsby’s Mills yes.
SCG/17 February 2003
6,627 words.
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 79/AD/05
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 5TH OF JULY 1979 AT 16 COWGILL STREET, EARBY. THE INFORMANT IS HORACE THORNTON, TAPER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Right Horace. On the last tape we were talking about .. we did just mention holidays a little bit and one of the things that's been striking me just lately is the fact that people keep saying to me ‘Where are you going for your holidays this year?’ And I keep saying ‘Well I don’t know whether I’ve got time.’ and this that and the other. But in the days we are talking about, anybody that could afford it, or let’s put it this way, it was everybody’s aim to go away for at least a week once a year wasn't it? And if possible to the seaside. How important was that to working people? I'm not just talking about your childhood days now, I'm talking about your early working life. How important was the holiday each year?
R - Well it were just a status symbol, going away. Anybody that didn’t go away, well they were poor. Because they used to go away and take a tin box with the grub in and just rent a bed and cruet.
Now, rent a bed and cruet?
R- Well, for a week. And the landlady would cook your stuff for you.
Aye.
R- If you went out and bought stuff she’d cook your meat and she’d probably sell you potatoes. Or you could dine out if you wanted.
(50)
But anybody that didn’t go away were a bit shamefaced, they went and lost themselves for the week or stayed in.
That’s it, I've heard that before. Yes.
R – Yes.
So would you call it ‘bed and cruet’ as opposed to ‘bed and breakfast’?
R - Well they didn't get breakfast, you found your own breakfast.
Yes. But I'm, you know, would you sort of say [to people] that you were getting bed and cruet, you know, use of t’table like?
R- No, they just called it getting lodgings for the week, a room for the week. But they used to take as much stuff as they could with them. And I've heard of landladies, you see .. you'd take eggs, fresh eggs and you’d give her the eggs but she were buying cheap Chinese eggs as they called them and boiling those for you and she kept your good eggs.
Aye.
R- And if you took a tin of fruit, swapping it for cheaper varieties. They’re living on your good stuff and you eat the cheap stuff that they’d bought.
Aye. And of course that’d just about all be by rail wouldn't it?
R- Yes, there were nothing else but railway. And trains were packed and when you went away to Blackpool, well, every other person you met, you knew them.
Aye. Which would be, which were the favourite resorts?
R- Blackpool for young people and Morecambe down at Skipton. Skipton were on a good railway connection you see for Morecambe and a lot of Bradford people went to Morecambe. But Morecambe and Blackpool were the mainstay. And then some people used to go to Harrogate.
(100)
For their holidays?
R- Yes, for their holidays to Harrogate. And occasionally you’d hear of people going to Scarborough but among the younger end it were Blackpool, you could have a good time there for next to nothing.
Aye. Scarborough’s always struck me as being like an upper class resort, at the top end of the market, would that be about right?
R- Well I don’t know. There's a lot of West Riding people go to Scarborough, or did. I were going to say it’d be as common as Blackpool, but happen not quite. I shouldn’t say that thing about Blackpool but it were a rum shop to go to.
Aye. And apart from holidays Horace, did you ever go out on any outings or visits when you were young. You know, this is apart from the annual holiday.
(5 min)
R- Well, not to stay. Now I had an aunt that lived at Manchester and when we were younger I’d go there and take a brother with me, me next younger brother, and go to stay at Manchester for a week.
Whereabouts were that in Manchester?
R - At Denton.
Aye, whereabouts in Denton?
R- Now then, Oak Drive. Do you know anything about Denton?
Aye, me dad were works manager at General Gas on Corporation Road for twenty odd years.
R- Well, as you went up out of Manchester on the tram you’d come to a public house, the Wilton Arms.
That’s it.
R- And there were a right big wall, it had painted on it: ‘Wilton Arms’ it’d be the bowling green.
That's it, yes.
R- Right big letters.
Yes, just before the waterworks.
R- Well, and across from there were a street that went at an angle. That were Oak Drive and they were good houses. Right, very good houses were Oak Drive.
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Aye. The waterworks were up on the left there.
R- Yes they were.
That’s it, yes. Were the windmill on the bank at front of the waterworks in them days?
R- It would be, and I think they covered them over didn’t they? [the reservoir]
They did something there, I'm not sure what.
R- The birds were contaminating them.
They did something there, I’m not sure. That's a big dual carriageway now you know, that road? [this was 1979, in 2003 there is a motorway there as well.]
R- Yes. Oh it's a long time since I went. It seems to be a long time.
Yes, that’s Ashton Road isn’t it?
R- Yes.
Yes. Leads up to Crown Point. That’s it.
R- Yes. Well that’s where I used to go. And then I had an aunt and uncle at Blackpool and we could go there. They had a smallholding. Now then, you went up from Talbot Square. I think it were a place called Carleton. [between North Shore and Poulton]
Yes?
R- It were as far as the trams ran, and you went into the country a few hundred yards and they had a smallholding. They were Carleton people and they had taken a fish and chip shop in 1913 and went to live there. Work were bad at Carleton and so…
That's Carleton Blackpool.
R- Yes. But they went to Carleton, They’d a fish shop down in Blackpool in a right busy area. They went in 1913 and the war came on and Blackpool were jam full of soldiers who got no suppers, only fish and chips. And they made up in the war years and they sold out in 1919. And they had one son and he worked on Fleetwood Docks and he used to get all the fish from there, bent and broken ones and half fish, you see? Getting it nearly given.
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Aye.
R - And that were how they made a lot of money.
Aye. That were a good do weren’t it?
R- Yes. And me aunt and uncle and the son’s wife all worked in the shop. And he worked on Fleetwood docks.
Aye. Well that’d be handy for a holiday, wouldn’t it?
R- Yes. And we went there, and we knew we were going, and me mother said “Well, save up.” That were after I started working as a lad and I saved up. I know I saved five pound once. I could have bought all Blackpool for five pound!
Aye. Well five pound in them days would have taken you for a week's holiday wouldn't it?
R- Yes it would. Oh I had money to burn. I’d go everywhere. And you see there were no board to pay, me aunt kept us. Me and me brother. Oh no, it were all right were Blackpool.
Which, when you think about it, is a very different picture than the one that a lot of people would like to promote, people slaving away in the dark satanic mills and never having any enjoyment.
R- Well I did. I mean, I think I were getting about fifteen pence spending money then. And with saving what I could, and running errands and any odd jobs.
When you say fifteen pence Horace you mean one and threepence?
R- One and threepence. Aye it were old money then. And there were a fellow there, he ran a holiday club and as soon as I got me wage I used to take me fifteen pence home, take it to him and when it come to the holidays I had five pounds, it must have been with what me mother gave me as well and you could get a return train ticket to Blackpool for very little. [‘Holiday clubs’ are an interesting subject. Sidney Nutter used to run one at Bancroft and when I talked to him about it he was very cagey about what happened to the interest it earned. I never got a straight answer from anyone about this and it leads me to suspect that whoever ran the club kept the interest. This was the position at Bancroft until Sidney died in 1978 and it raises the question, why did people use this way of saving? I can understand it when, like Horace in Carleton, there was no easy access to a savings bank. I suspect that there was an element of keeping it in the community, close to home and easy to make a deposit because this lessened the temptation to spend. A very similar mechanism to workers investing in the shed companies. Another facet of this is what happened when the holder of the fund did a runner!]
How much about?
R- Well I don't know, five shilling happen. No more.
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(10 min)
Were any of the family connected with the temperance movement?
R- No. There were none of us drank. None of us has ever, I have a drink, but don’t go sitting in public houses.
But your dad’d have a drink?
R- Oh yes, I think he went fairly regular, but didn't drink to excess.
That’s it, aye. Did anybody ever say anything to you about the evils of drink, you know?
R- Well, with being a church family, and you say “now think on, no going in the Swan!” You see when you don't have it in the house. And a mate of mine, he were dead against drink because he had a drunken father and he’d had a hell of a life, you see? He were dead against it, you couldn’t [blame him]. You see his father used to work on t’railway and get his wage at Friday night and he’d go straight into t’public house and then go home at ten o’clock, at turning out time, fighting drunk. Oh they had a rotten time of it.
How about things like the Band of Hope and what not, did you come up against them at church?
R- No, we’d nothing of that, nothing like that. The Chapel ran the Rechabites. They did.
That's it, aye. Did you ever sign the pledge?
R - No.
No. Sorry Horace.
R- There's one thing better than signing the pledge and that is having no money to spend on beer, that keeps you from smoking and drinking, if you have nothing to buy it with.
It keeps you from doing a lot of things Horace, I'll tell you!
R- Aye. They say money is the root of all evil.
Aye. Now then, what can you remember of, can you remember seeing women going into pubs?
R- Well, only one that I can remember went into a public house at Carleton. And they called her Mrs. Jubb.
Mrs…?
R- Jubb. J u b b. But in the village she were called Mrs. Jug because she went to the public house with a jug, she didn’t sit in but she went regularly at dinner times. Mrs. Jubb.
What did people think about that? You know, how was it looked on?
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R- Oh dreadful, anybody [woman] that went into a public house. And anybody that, well, when they started having lipstick and powder, oh it were a deadly sin were that. Aye, it were.
Yes. And how about women smoking?
R- No, never such a thing, not in public.
Did you ever see any of the old lasses smoking a pipe?
R- Never, never.
No. Chewing tobacco?
R- Men chewed tobacco but not women. No. Never saw that.
No? Of course some women did use to chew didn't they. You know, I can remember that firm at Skipton .. what was the name, the tobacco firm at Skipton. Kendal Twist, Gawith, Brown and Hoggarth.
R- Yes, aye.
They still sold up to about ten years since some chewing tobacco called Ladies Brown Twist. Aye .. Ladies Brown.
R- But people used to chew twist at work, and especially twisters that were sat down, loomers and twisters and them, they'd be spitting down the wall and on the floor. It were enough to make you sick.
Aye. Just on that subject, Ernie Roberts once told me that one of the reasons why a lot of tacklers used to chew twist was, he said in the days when they were kissing shuttles, especially when women were using lipstick, he said the shuttles used to be clarted up at the ends with lipstick. And he said it was more or less a disinfectant. And of course there was the converse of that, one lady once told me she learned to weave with a weaver who chewed twist, and she had to kiss the shuttle after him and she said it tasted terrible. Aye.
R- Oh it would do. But one man when I were a lad, he were a weaver
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and he used to chew twist and then when he got all the goodness out on it, he put it up on the steam pipe and dried it and then he smoked it. That’s what they did. And it were cheap enough but wages were low. I mean they couldn’t afford.
That’s it.
R- Perhaps they both chewed it and… but he had it twice.
He had it twice, had his cake and then ate it. Did you know any families that were disadvantaged by drink, you know, by the fact that some member of the family drank?
(15 min)
R- Well this mate of mine. There were half a dozen in the family. I think they were hard put to.
And you'd say that that was directly due to drink?
R- Directly due to drink. Oh well, lots of families, oh there were lots of them that the parent, the father drank you see?
How common was drunkenness in Carleton at the time we are talking about? I mean how common was it to see a drunken man on a Friday night about nine or ten o’clock?
R- Well, they used to he turned out of the public house at ten o’clock and they were shouting and they were fighting and there was all sorts going on then. Men going home drunk and rows blowing up, and fighting with the wives, and young follows going home and fighting with the parents.
Fairly black picture Horace, would you say it was worse then than now?
R- Well I don’t see .. my wife has remarked many a time, when you are out you never see drunken people in the road same as you used to do. It’s either they can’t afford as much or it isn’t as strong.
Yes.
R- I never see drunken people about. But of course they had to walk in those days. I suppose a lot of the people that are going in their cars, they couldn’t walk it.
Yes. And then I think you're quite right, well, I'm sure you are. There’s been some figures published just lately about the gravity of beer and it certainly was stronger then than it is now.
R- Well I take a drink occasionally but I never drink, I never go
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in any public house here, never have done. But we get it into the house. And my wife were very anaemic at one time with arthritis and they advised her to have a bottle of Guinness every day and it did mend her up. And I used to drink it as well. But if we go away anywhere, we'll have a drink then when we went to places. But a lot of it, it’s no more than rainwater.
Aye, you’re quite right.
R- It is no more than rainwater.
Guinness is good stuff.
R- It is. And certainly I always plump for Guinness.
Aye, a bit of body in it.
R - It has.
Aye. In the local pub, the Swan wasn’t it? Well, how many pubs were there in Carleton?
R- One
One.
R- There’s one now. Yes.
Yes, the Swan. Now, were certain rooms for certain people in that pub?
R- There were t’bar and t’tap room. It were dear in the bar parlour, there were only two rooms. There were t’bar and there were t’tap room and as you went in there were t’bar on the left and as you went forward there were another biggish room, that were t’tap room. But both doors lead out to the bar you see. But it were dearer in the bar. But there were flag floors, nothing on the floors, and spittoons and iron tables so as they couldn't be fighting with them.
Aye. Can you remember any street performers or people selling stuff who entertained passers-by in Carleton?
R- Well, we’d occasionally have a German band.
Tell me about that, that’s interesting.
R- Well, there’d he three or four players. They’d come into the place but they always seemed to be in such a hurry, come rushing in and play a few tunes in various parts and then march out again. They always seemed to be in such a hurry to get away. And then occasionally a man with a performing bear. And a man with a hurdy gurdy as we call them, and a monkey. All that sort of thing.
Yes. Now, hurdy gurdy, that’s one on a stick.
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R- Stick, yes.
That’s it, that’s not a barrel organ.
R- And they could, they had a strap on and they just put the strap over their shoulder and went off with them. And the stick stuck out behind them same as a third leg.
Yes. German bands, were they actually Germans?
R- I think they would be. I think they would be and then you’d get street singers.
(20 min)
Aye.
R- And one, and perhaps one with a cornet and one that could sing. And I thought they were particularly good singers. And there were some good ones you know, you could hear them the length of the village.
Did there get to be more of that after the war and when the bad years came? After say about 1920.
R- Well, there were this disabled soldier, ex service man, that were the gimmick. I suppose it were true you see, and there’d he some one armed and one legged, they’d definitely be soldiers, disabled soldiers. We got quite a lot of beggars because there were a workhouse at Colne and anybody that chose could walk over the top to get to the next one at Skipton. Skipton workhouse, and Carleton would be a happy hunting ground.
Yes. Skipton workhouse were Raikeswood weren’t it?
R – Yes. It was. There weren’t one at Barnoldswick, there were a common lodging house there weren’t there?
Yes. Barlick came under Skipton workhouse, Skipton district. ‘Cause funnily enough the workhouse boundaries, the union boundaries as they called them, were in many cases different than other boundaries.
R – Yes. Well it were Lancashire and Yorkshire you see. But there were one particular woman in our street, they must have known her, they must have passed the word round because she gave to everybody that came. All the tramps went to her house before they tried anybody else. And she were very poor you see, she had a husband that worked in the mill but everybody went to Mrs. Shaw’s.
Mrs Shaw. How often did you see tramps?
R- Oh every day, every day.
How could you tell a tramp from anybody else?
R – Well, they were walking on the road, and they were, the appearance, and they’d have a bit of a pack and be ragged. And if they were out on a wet day, rain was running out of their trouser bottoms and you knew they weren’t doing it for fun.
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That’s it, yes. What was people’s attitude towards tramps? You know, were they generally .. ?
R- They weren’t nasty with them because everybody were poor you see, everybody were poor. Poor helped the poor. They do, it’s a fact.
Do you think that in some ways that could be connected with that question I was asking you about drink, about people getting drunk. I quote this many a time, it’s something that struck me very much when I read it in a book called The Classic Slum and it was about Salford. And this follow said in that book that they said in those days, they had a saying in Salford that the quickest way out of Salford were five pints of beer. And, you understand what I’m driving at?
R- Yes, yes.
Do you think that that was perhaps something to do with the fact that people seemed to get drunk?
R - Well, they might have done but a tramp, he’d never have much money to get drunk may unless… I mean, people didn’t give money, they didn’t ask for money, it were usually a slice of bread. “Can you make me a drink of tea?” Me mother were very good, she’d turn nobody away. But Mrs Shaw, everybody went to Mrs Shaw’s and it wasn’t the first house in the street, there were five at that side and five at this side and hers were number 5,6,7 that side. But they all went to her house.
Did, have you over come across a thing, it’s something that I’ve come across in Barlick where it was quite common for people to actually save up for perhaps three months, six months, a year, save up till they had enough money to strike t’rant?
R- I know one man and he did strike t’rant. But it weren't till he got enough money, it just come over him at certain times, he used to be a right good weaver and a nice man and then he’d just break out and it were pitiful, pitiful to see. And then eventually, when he’d quietened down he’d come to the mill asking for his looms back and trembling. And such a nice fellow he were, and tidy and clean, and then a couple of years would go by and then they’d say “Joe’s on t’rant again!” They knew where Joe were.
(55O)
Aye, struck t’rant, aye.
R- Yes, aye. Oh it were pitiful and you’d see him come out of the house with something under his coat and he were going to try and sell it to somebody, a clock or anything. But it were a pity because he were a nice fellow.
Ah well. I think that what we are talking about there, really is one of the facets of social life at that time, and I think it tells you
(25 min)
a lot about the way people lived. I tend to the conclusion myself that many a time drink was an escape and that's .. really I shouldn't come to conclusions but it does seem to me that some people did have very narrow humdrum lives you know, in respect of their work. I’m not saying that they were all oppressed you know, and ground down by the mill owners and this, that and the other, but there is no doubt about it that .. Well in fact somebody once put it to me that probably a lot of people, especially in the slums in the big cities, the most comfortable place they’d ever go into in their life would be the tap room of the pub.
R – Yes. But this particular man then, he’d a decent house, his wife were right decent, and he had one daughter, and they were always in work; and then he just used to break out. And he was the only one I know, there might have been people that were doing it, secretly drinking, but never struck t’rant the same as he did.
Did you belong to any clubs or societies before you left school? You know
Like the church choir, scouts, guides? Well, obviously not the guides!
R- No. Well, me father being connected with the church, at one time there were Mr Renardson, he used to have a curate, the one that I knew most about Mr Renardson and he were wealthy enough to keep a curate. And this curate ran a scout troop, and they used to go off camping to Malham and all up and down. And me father used to go as cook. He did, he used to, and they had a bell tent. They used to go, and this curate, I don't think he were without money, he used to pay for them, but that were the scout troop the church scout troop.
And were you in that?
R – No, never. No.
Didn’t it appeal to you?
R – Well, I suppose it, but me father saw enough of me at home without having me [with him on holiday].
Ah, that could be a point. What do you think, looking back, what do you think about Carleton as a place to live when you were young?
R - Very nice, you’d happy times. The place you are born at, it’s always the best. I mean you, it's all right is Carleton. There weren’t much going on but you knew everybody and everybody knew you. There were no mugging and no wrong doing. I remember, there were a man murdered a chap in a public house at Skipton and I remember the policemen coming for him. He’d been drinking one Saturday and they’d had a row. He were a weaver and he had some scissors and they had been fighting and he said that he’d stuck his self with these, stuck this other man with these scissors with them being in his pocket. He’d never pulled them out of his pocket. But he got sent to jail for six or seven years. But I always remember that.
That was a Carleton man? Can you remember his name?
R- Yes. Dewsnap.
Dewsnap?
R - Yes that was his name.
That was his surname, Aye.
R- Aye, Dewsnap, I never forgot that name. And I can remember the policeman's name, they called him Garside, and all the people stood about, peeping.
When were that about Horace?
R – Well, I don’t know, I might be ten or twelve, about that age.[1916/1918]
Aye. About the end of the war or something like that. Aye.
R- Yes.
Can you remember going to any weddings when you were young?
R- No.
Or seeing any weddings?
R- Well, we were connected with the church, we saw them all. We saw them all.
That’s it, aye. Well how about, how about getting married then, in what way was it different from getting married now? You know, for instance how did people dress and how did they go on with having the reception and everything?
R- Oh they got dressed up and they'd have reception in their own house or the parents house. And then one wedding I can remember about
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(30 min)
vividly. A niece of me mother’s got married and they had, not a Landau, you know those cadet?
Horse drawn?
R- No, pulled by two horses. After the wedding, they’d had the wedding breakfast, they had a big wagonette they called them.
Yes.
R - And they got in at a door at t’back, and pulled with two horses and the driver sat up on a high seat. Well, the guests all went to Ilkley, had a day out. I can remember that.
Aye. That sounds grand. How about, obviously they’d go to church with horses.
R - Yes, or walked. They walked, a lot of them walked.
Or walked. Aye.
R - But I can remember when they had a horse and open Landau with a grey horse and all. Oh it were nice and the coachman with this whip with the white ribbon on. You remember such like things.
Yes, and how about funerals?
R- Well, they used to carry them. They carried them from the house.
Like bearers.
R- The bearers. And they had, they didn’t carry them shoulder high, they’d two sticks underneath, square poles, and a man at each side. That were how they carried them. And then that were to the church gates and then they had a wheeled bier from there, wheeled into the church and then wheel them out again. Or before they got the wheeled bier they carried them into the church and put them on a bier without wheels.
Aye, that’s it.
And then they had to lift them up and carry them out. And you know, if it was the farthest point in Carleton they had to be changing bearers. So they’d have eight you see and change over. Undertaker used to say “We’ll have a change.” and same as just imagine, a man happen sixteen stone and the weight of the coffin.
Aye, that’s right aye. And did you ever see a horse drawn hearse?
R- Oh yes, plenty. Yes. The people would come to be buried frae away. People that were bred at Carleton that were living at Skipton, that were Carleton people.
Was the cemetery up between, on Carleton Road there?
R- Yes it were there then. But a firm called Woodward’s, they were
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the principal people, they always had horses and hearse, and they did for both
weddings and funerals all about Skipton.
Was there an undertaker in Carleton?
R- Yes, it was my grandfather.
Ah yes, builder and joiner, Whiteoaks, aye.
R- Yes, Whiteoaks. And then when he died there were two uncles collared on, William Horner Whiteoak and Joseph Whiteoak, two brothers, my uncles. And I spent hundreds of hours in that joiner’s shop just to see ‘em making the coffins. I got so as I could make one myself. I used to see ‘em sawing the side boards and grooving them and they had a big kettle full of boiling water, teemed it on to the saw cuts so they [side boards] bent to make the shape. And then boiling pitch up, they used to run pitch all on the seams inside the coffin to keep the water out. Oh, I’ve seen the whole carry on.
There’d be no such thing as a Chapel of Rest then?
R- No. People were laid out at home. Yes.
Tell me what you know about that.
R- Well there were women up and down in the village that’d go laying people out. And then some in a family would lay their own relatives out, they would. But me grandfather, he did everything, making farm carts, they’d do anything, windows and doors, made the wheels, spokes for the wheel, what shall I say, everything about making a wheel.
Right through the process.
R- Yes, the hub, the felloes they called them didn’t they?
The felloes on the outside of the wheel, yes. Spokes?
R- They got them all rough, chopped them out, spoke shaved the spokes, did everything, and all by hand, no machinery. And then with a farmer’s carts, Joseph, me uncle Joe, he could blacksmith as well. He made all the fittings for the farm carts, all on the shafts and the hinges when they were tip carts and the tail board, you know they were all iron work on there.
That’s it, yes.
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(35 min)
R- And then they set to and painted them all, lined them all with the red lines all round.
Aye, that orange paint, they did wouldn’t they, all of them carts painted wi’ it. Aye.
R- Yes. Right from scratch, but they didn't hoop them, they went away to a blacksmith at Skipton to get the hoops put on.
Yes, [the tyres] on the wheels. Yes.
R- Yes, it were a special job were putting the hoops on.
Aye, a skilled job putting the tyres on. Now, undertaking. In those days would an undertaker do, nowadays we have, well we call them undertakers don't we, funeral directors and undertakers. I mean, they actually undertake to do everything connected with a funeral. Well it wasn’t just the same in those days was it. I mean all the undertaker would do then would be what, make the coffin and arrange the actual interment wouldn't he?
R- And sent the bill. Now in our case in Carleton you went and saw the vicar or parson whatever you like to call him yourself and, “me father’s dead, I want a grave, I want to open our grave.” He’d say “Right, see the grave digger, and tell him and when would you like the funeral?” You’d say you’d like it on Thursday for instance, if that’s convenient for you, he’d look it up in his book, “Yes, I’m free that Day. What time?” You’d say two o’clock and that was it. And you sent for
the undertaker, the joiner, they call them undertakers now but it were the village joiner. He measured up and made the coffin. And a coffin would be £6 in those days. And the church fees were 19/-. Now I’ll tell you what that comprised; they dug a nine foot grave that held four people, that was 17/6. The clerk got sixpence and the parson a shilling up till, I think it would be after the first world war. It were 19/- and £6 probably £7 all told. And my uncle used to say there were lots he never got paid for. He paid the church fees and sent his bill in, but some didn't pay.
If somebody died, say there was some old person living on their own that had no relations and they died, who took care of that burial?
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R- Well it were the town you see. It'd he arranged through the overseers, they paid for the burial.
We’re getting on a more cheerful subject now . Where did you enjoy going to most when you were a child?
R- Well, there were only one thing, it were playing out. And at Carleton the land were free to you, you were country people, you didn’t do any damage and you just wandered anywhere. You went to a farmyard, then mucked about on the farm and wandered round with the farmer and ran after the sheep like a dog and it were right enjoyable. And you went helping in the fields at haytime. You’d get a drink of home brewed beer and happen a sandwich to out of the luncheon basket. But when I got a bit older we were supposed to go over to me uncles, any spare time. I used to go after tea when I were working, go after tea and if it had been a hayday and help them. Go at Saturday. But there were never any Sunday working. Even though perhaps it were a bad time and Sunday were a beautiful day, but there were never any Sunday haymaking in those days.
That’s a thing, you are the first one I’ve come across that ever did any haymaking by hand. There’d he Irishmen in them days would there?
R- Well he didn’t employ Irishmen, yes there were Irishmen but he didn't employ Irishmen because there were plenty of us. And Leonard, me uncle Leonard, he had the farm, me uncle Joe and me uncle Horner ran the joiners shop and it were all me grandfather’s see? And in Summer time, they just [haytimed], any work they had in the joiner’s shop, unless it were a funeral, it just had to wait. They went and worked in the hay.
(40 min)
Yes. Of course something that people forget nowadays, even people who are actually farming now, haytime then was different than now because haytime could go on for a couple of months easy.
R- And longer than that. Sometimes they never did finish. The hay just rotting in the field.
Yes. And that were mostly horse mowers.
R- Yes, usually a single horse mower. If a farmer had only one horse, if he could muster half a dozen of you, and you were one behind the other, swathe turning and windrowing, and a row of you shaking out. And there’d be a man, same as you were swathe turning, there’d be a man at the front and the lads in between and you’d got to keep up.
That’s it. Did they, would they leave it abroad at night or would they put it in footcocks?
R - Well it depends, if it were settled weather they'd leave it abroad.
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But if it were greenish they’d put it in footcocks, it helped to make hay. And then the next stage, if it weren't quite fit to get they’d put it in pikes, like a big hub. big hub. Yes.
Hub, that’s it, in hub, aye.
R- And then the next day you had to break them all out if it were going to be a fine day. But they knew the weather in those days, they knew what it were going to do. But these uncles of mine, they were a bit peculiar, they’d he smelling at it and one'd he saying it were fit, the other’d say it weren’t and then uncle George would say “Come on, get the bugger in!” And we were stood round wondering what were going to happen.
Aye, I can sympathise with you.
R- But they were like that. But it were all hand work, they had a strawing machine but it weren’t as good as being strawn by hand, it left too much you see. Left too much that it didn't move.
That’s it, yes. And it were hard work on a horse and all with a strawing machine.
R- Yes, it were. But mowing with a single horse mower on a heavy crop, it took it out of a horse.
Aye. When did you see your first mowing machine with the engine on, you know, the double horse mower you know, or what they call double horse mowers, but it was actually a single horse with the engine on.
R- Well, next to this farm of me uncle’s there were a bigger farm, Heslaker, you know, when you turn up to go up that lane to Carleton, Carleton Lane End. When you're coming on to Skipton Road up to Carleton. First farm on your right is Heslaker and me uncle had the next farm, Funkirk.
What?
R- F u n k i r k.
Aye? Funkirk .. Aye
R- And that belonged to Lanefoxes(?) but all the land down there belonged
to Broughton hall, Tempest. And his land ran right as a long narrow farm into Broughton hall land.
Yes.
R- And of course Broughton Hall bred pheasants, but they didn’t get them all because they used to stray and there were, and my uncle always had a game license, he could go and get ‘em off like billy-oh. And I were telling you afore, bringing rabbits that were full of shot.
Aye, Broughton Hall rabbits.
R- Aye
(45 min)
SCG/18 February 2003
6,681 words.
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 79/AD/06
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 5TH OF JULY 1979 AT 16 COWGILL STREET, EARBY. THE INFORMANT IS HORACE THORNTON, TAPER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Now, on to a very important subject Horace, pocket money. Did you have pocket money.
R- Not until I were working.
Aye and what did you get them?
R- Well, a shilling or twelve pence. But before that any errands I ran, any jobs I did for anybody or if I’d been messing about on a farm helping a farmer, he’d happen give me sixpence. Well you'd turn it all in and you’d to remember, no keeping any money, that were the thing we were short of most, cash.
When you started work you'd he tipping up?
R- Yes.
Yes. It seems to have been quite usual round about to give a penny in the shilling pocket money, would that be about right with you?
R – No. I didn’t get so much. No.
Aye. What would you spend, if you had some pocket money what would you spend it on?
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R - You could get to the pictures for a penny. Saturday afternoon and you either come out of the pictures, you’d have a pennorth of chips or a pennorth of tripe bits. Where the bus station is at Skipton there used to be a tripe stall and a fish shop. One half you could go and sit in, and the other half were the fry, for the fish pan and they could buy tripe. You’d get a pennorth of tripe bits, bits that they’d cut off. Slice a piece off and cut it up, put it on a paper and salt and vinegar. And you could either sit down and eat it or go out and walk towards home eating it. But that were the main thing. And there were a fellow called Morris run the picture house in Skipton then on Sackville Street, and at Easter and Christmas time there were always something, a gift for you, an apple or an orange. They’d be very cheap to him but you can reckon it up when it were only a penny to go in. But everybody that went to the matinee would get an apple or an orange. Of course you were going the year round and there were a lot of these pictures. ‘Continued next week’ left you with your hair stood on end, Moonriders and the Clutching Hand, I remember them yet you know and you’d come out with your hair stood on end.
Aye, we’ll get on to the pictures in a while. Did friends call at your house often?
R- Ob yes, they’d call for you.
When they called they more or less called for you to go out. They wouldn’t call to visit you?
R- No they wouldn't stay in. No.
Aye, how did you spend Saturday when you were young?
R- Well, it were the same as any other day and there were a football team in the village. We’d watch the football, and a cricket team. You could either go to the football or the cricket team or wandering round on the moors or anywhere. A gang of you that you’d say “Where have we to go?” You'd meet in the centre of Carleton and it were “Where have we to go?” “We’ll go to such and such a place.” Or we’d come over towards Broughton when the gamekeepers were watching out for you, any pheasant eggs…
How about concerts, theatres?
R- No theatres.
Music Hall?
R- No, not when you were young. You didn’t know there were such a thing.
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Did you ever see any travelling theatres about?
R- No.
Can you ever remember the family at home discussing politics?
R- Never. It’d be, well, when I, up to being ten when my father died, well everything just goes over your head. You’ve to be seen and not heard and you didn’t really know what were going on. And we weren’t interested in politics, you’d hear people arguing and Liberals and Conservatives, Gladstone and all them people and rowing a bit, but it didn't concern us.
What views did your father hold, do you know?
R- Well, he were the secretary of the Conservative Club, long service medal. You can tell what all the family were like. And I have a brother and a sister just the same, but I’ve a brother that isn’t and I aren’t.
Why was he a Conservative, do you know?
(5 min)
R- I don’t know, it’d be because, I don’t know. Church people were Conservatives and the Chapel were Liberal. And Labour didn’t go anywhere. That were how it were considered in those days.
How about your mother?
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R- Oh, Conservative. Business people and the farming community and all the people at the big houses would all be Conservative.
Aye. Of course. Skipton would be returning a Conservative.
R- Always has done, except once and it were a Liberal. I believe, a long time ago when the Liberals were in power. But there used to be a fellow called Roundell.
Roundell yes.
R - The boss of Gledstone. And then there were Rickards, MP.
Yes, aye.
R- Aye. And then there were this Drayson, he were a dead loss Drayson were.
Aye. He were really weren’t he.
R- He were never at home. He were never in the country.
Aye. Was either your mother or father actually a member of the Conservative Party?
R- Well, me mother were in the Women Unionists.
The Women’s Unionists, aye.
R- Well, whether they’re in the go now, I suppose they are?
Ah well, it’s still the Conservative and Unionist Party.
R- Yes, and they used to have trips off. Go to, go on day trips to Scarborough and places like that the Women’s Unionists. And they used to run trips to London. You set off at Friday night and go down to London, have a trip round London and go to Windsor and all in a day, all your meals provided for about 25/-. I’ve been on them when I were a lad. Aye 25/- to go off at Friday night, you'd get
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into London happen six o'clock at the morning, go to Lyons Corner House for breakfast, and then you’d get into a coach. Oh coaches used to be, 500 of you. Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey then go to Lyons Corner House for your dinner, and then off to Windsor, aye Windsor were the usual place you went to, look round Windsor Castle. And then back home, and then you’d the evening free to wander round London. But I know I went once or twice, I went and an uncle of mine went and sort of , he were in charge of me.
If there were an election would your father or your mother or both of them do any work for the election like canvassing or like that?
R- Probably they would. I can't remember me mother doing anything like that, just me father would probably be addressing envelopes and that sort of thing.
What can you remember about elections when you were young?
R- Nothing really. Nothing. Until you're getting into your twenties and you begin to think and take a bit of notice, get influenced with things that are going on you never took any interest of it.
What were your politics?
R- Well, Conservative till I got out into the world a bit and I thought “This is no good for me.” The old policy and the cotton bosses, and I thought “Well, if these are Conservatives I don’t want to be one!” And after the
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first world war there were lads coming back out of the army you see with their
views, and that influenced you a lot.
Now, that’s interesting. Would you say that the fact that these lads had been away at the war, had it altered them?
R- Yes, it had. They’d a different outlook. Raw country lads you see and then being shipped abroad and conned with all this propaganda stuff and then they realised what suckers they were. It happened the same after 1945, what a majority the Labour Party had, two to one weren't it, 1945 election.
And so what did you swing to then?
R- Labour.
Labour. Of course, I mean, the Socialist Party were only just really rising then weren't it, I mean, like the first the first big one was the
(10 min)
1906 election weren’t it when they got the first seats, and 1908 when the Liberals got back in they got a lot then. But really the Socialist party didn't come to, didn't really get hold until about 1920 did it, something like that. And when you say that you looked at the mill owners you know and decided that Conservatism wasn’t for you. you know, did anything actually push you over the edge. Were you out of work you know, did something like that really ..
R- No it wasn’t the matter of being out of work, but the way you were treated at work. You see, if you were running a set and you hadn't finished at Friday
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well you'd to go in at Monday morning, and the set, the rest of the set .. start at seven o'clock, it might last while ten o'clock, and then it were “Go and sign on.” Not let you stop the rest of the day, “Go and sign on.” Sort of tricks like that. Don't say “Well, you’ve got up and you’ve come to your work. You can’t sign on, you can’t go to the Labour Exchange because you’d work to be done.” There were no saying “We’ll pay you for the rest of the day. Just pass your time and clean up a bit.” But there were none of that.
Did you ever get the feeling in them days that .. and especially when you think about people going to war to fight .. It's probably a leading question this but it's the way that it often strikes me. I often think that in many ways people have been, here again we've got to get down to the class job again, you know, working class people were regarded as expendable.
R- Yes, they don’t care two… Con ‘em into going fighting for their country and they don't own a blade of grass. Now I had an argument with a chap out on a walk. And I had walked this footpath for 60 years and I were going on this footpath with a party of men and women and as we're going along they said “There’s someone coming.” And across at the hall a door opened
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and a fellow come bouncing out with two big dogs. Come round to us and sort of blocked the way. And “Where do you think you are going?” I says “Well we are going down here, there’s a footpath down here to Bell Busk Station. It’s always been a public footpath.” “Oh that may be but I’ve been to the magistrates and got this footpath stopped.” And he were fumbling with this paper in his pocket. “Just read this paper, you’ll understand it.” I says “I’m reading no paper. How old are you?” He says “I’m 49.” I says “Well, I’m 72 (that was last year), and I've walked
this footpath for 60 years I came with an uncle of mine when I were 12 years old. I’ve walked this footpath, but you’ve got your money in.” He says “Well, I’ve bought this place, it’s mine now and people’s gone anywhere and I’ve stopped that.” I says “Well, that may be. You’re in textiles aren’t you? Been in textiles?” Oh yes, he was such a body. “Well, I’ve worked in textiles all my life and I’ve worked just as hard, probably harder than you have and you own this and I don’t own a blade of grass. And you’ll deprive us of the pleasure of walking on it. I’ve never been stopped by anybody and I’m not being stopped by you.” And I walked on, just walked on.
(15 min)
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And he shouted after me “I'm not wanting to deprive you of your pleasure - he said - Next time you want to come - he says - just ring me up and ask permission.” I says “No bloody fear!” I were asking no permission to go on a footpath that I knew had been open 60 years to my knowledge and I had walked it many a time.
Yes, I agree with that perfectly. Them’s my sentiments exactly Horace
R- Well I just told him straight. And some of them, they daren't speak, and they said “You just did right” But they didn’t they just, but when I said come on, let’s be going, a lot of them come forwards, but some would have turned back.
Yes. When you got interested in socialism Horace, did you, were you active you know, were you a member of the party?
R- I joined the Labour Party, paid a subscription to the Labour Party but I didn’t take any part in it. I paid.
Yes, Was that privately or through the union levy?
R- Well, I paid the union levy and then I paid into the Labour Party here you see.
Yes that's it. Tell me something, something you said then… One very interesting thing round here is, going back to the days of the Clarion you know, the ILP, the Independent Labour Party were very strong in Nelson and they had a higher proportion of conscientious objectors in the second world war than any other town in the country. And basically that was due to the old ILP tradition I think.
R- Yes, pacifism.
What's your attitude towards things like conscription and pacifism?
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R- Well, I'd really no fixed ideas on it. And I said to my wife if I’ve got to go, I’ll go. But they were coming round wanting you to join the Home Guard and I didn’t fill it in. And a chap come here and sent me a form to join the Home Guard and I didn’t fill it in. And a chap come here, he were the commander in chief of the Earby lot and I told him I’m joining no Home Guard. You’re not getting me playing at silly buggers crawling round in a dyke bottom with the branches of trees in me hair. He came here and he wanted me to take lodgers in, these people that had come from Coventry to work at the Rover, ammunition factory, well tank factory weren’t it at Earby. I refused point blank to have anybody because we’d heard such tales about them coming home drunk and going to bed and filling the chamber pot and letting it run over on to the bedroom floor and I weren’t having that. And both my wife and myself were working full time. I were working at Skipton and I weren’t getting up and going out at six o’clock in the morning and leaving my wife in bed with strange men in the house. And I refused to have them. They couldn’t compel you to have them, you could be compelled to take children, refugees, but not lodgers and feed them. And we didn’t have them. And then they wanted me to join the firewatchers and I didn’t do that, I refused to do that. If I’d have been working in Earby I suppose I’d have been compelled to do it, firewatching at these factories but when you’re working away they don’t know what you’re doing and I told this uncle of mine and he said Oh, get a form and I’ll fill it in for you to say that you’re working there at night on the farm. And that did the trick, I didn’t do anything. I suppose that it wasn’t really patriotic but I’d have gone if I’d been called up, I’d have gone but reserved occupation, and I hadn’t to go.
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R- I were forty when the war started, forty in 1946 I think I’d be about 40. I were getting on then to be going into the army.
We’ll get back to politics, we just strayed off the path a little bit there, but anyway, it doesn’t matter. Did your father usually vote in elections?
(20 min)
R- He’d vote, be sure he’d vote when he were Secretary of the Conservative Party.
Yes, that’s it. Do you think that your father ever felt his job would be at risk unless he voted for a certain party?
R- Well, they couldn't do it openly, but when you're mixed up in them, church, verger at church and mixed up with all the bosses and everybody else, I mean. And I suppose his parents had been Conservative and grandfather on me mother’s side, business man, he’d be Conservative.
Yes, I think that what that question’s aimed at, really, is the fact that you know very well [there can be pressures] On a slightly different tack, there were .. well, for instance, there was one mill at Harle Syke and it was a well known fact that unless you were a member of the chapel up at the top of the road you didn’t stand a chance of a job at this mill.
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And really I think that what we’re aiming at here is .. did people think that there’d be any chance of them losing their job if, say, the mill owners knew they'd voted socialist or something like that. Have you ever come across anything like that?
R- No I haven’t but I suppose if they did find out and there were any trouble they’d say well he is a bother maker and we'll get rid of him. And people said to me, here in Earby about the parents trying to form Unions, or being a Union man and complaining and they’d get sacked and word would go round all Earby and he couldn’t get a job anywhere in Earby. See?
That’s it, yes. We’ll come on to that later with the Unions. I shouldn't have pushed that question that much there. Anyway, did your mother vote in the elections after 1918 when they got the vote?
R- Oh yes she would do. I mean, the Women’s Unionists, they’d all vote.
Aye.
R- I’ve had a vote all my life and I've never been on the winning side yet. That’s because Skipton division, there's never been a Labour man.
Yes, you're not the only one that has said that to me.
R- And so this time and last timeI1 didn't vote for anybody, I didn’t vote. And I don't vote any time, either in Council Elections or Common Market or going into Europe or anything. I just didn’t vote.
Yes, which is I think a very good argument in favour of proportional representation.
R- Oh yes.
Yes, because it gets you into the stage where you think “Well. What the hell’s the use of me voting?” I mean, look, there's plenty of people here as you say that have voted for 25 years in the Skipton constituency and longer, and never ...
R- Yes, 50 years.
And never seen the vote do any good at all.
R- No, and you see if, as you say, [PR] if you vote you would get a look in sometime.
That’s it, you would feel that you’ve done something, it feels like a wasted vote doesn’t it yes.
R- It is yes. And still, when you look at it, it’s a wasted vote not voting.
Yes, difficult thing that really.
R- But the way things have been lately, with the. Labour Party having a Conservative Prime Minister, I just thought “What’s the use of voting for any of ‘em. One’s no better than the other.”
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Yes.
R- I mean it were Callaghan that lost the Labour Party this election, nothing else. In my opinion. And the Labour Party, the body of the Labour Party can see it and they want rid of him. It were definitely him, I mean, it were all Tory policy. Saying one thing and doing another. Wouldn’t take us into the Common Market and they were determined to get us in. And Harold Wilson, well of all the two faced hypocrites that ever lived, he were one.
Well, there you are.
R- With all his carrying on with Marcia, Lady Falkender and Lady Kagan, Lord Kagan and that Eric Mitchell, the same as in the Jeremy Thorpe trial, That chap that had been giving to the Liberal Party?
Hayward?
R- Hayward. He said, did he do it for getting, did he want an honour? He said “Oh, I’ll not get an honour. I don’t make raincoats.” He said it straight out.
(25 min)
Do you know what your parents thought about the Suffragettes?
R- No, I don’t, no.
Did you ever hear the subject brought up at all?
R- We never discussed politics or religion in our house in no shape or form.
Was that a rule or was it just an understood thing?
R- It wasn’t a rule and it wasn’t an understood thing, but we just didn’t do it. We didn’t do it.
Right, we’ll have a look at your education now Horace. What school did you go to?
R- Carleton Endowed School.
Carleton?
R- Endowed, it were a church school.
Endowed, that’s it. And .. how old were you when you first went there?
R- Twelve. The day I was twelve I went half time.
Ah, when you first went to school.
R- Oh, to school!
Yes, sorry, yes.
R- Well, I were going before I were three. And I went in a pinny and frock, I hadn’t been breeched then.
That’s it, yes.
R- Because I’ve a photograph taken in the class. Sat on the floor and a pair of clogs on, brass toe caps.
We’ll have a copy of that! Do you know how old your parents were when they went to school?
R- I’ve no idea. They’d have to pay in those days, They had to pay.
No. Yes, that’s it.
R- Penny a week I think it were.
Yes, before the education act. That’s it, aye.
R- Yes, they had to pay.
And that was an endowed school, church school, so that came under a board of management and the vicar would be on it. That's it.
R- Yes, and Slingsby were the chairman.
Aye, over at the mill.
R- Yes you see? And Slingsby and the school master were hand in glove. The school master's job were to find labour for the mill. And before you left, when you were leaving he called you to his desk and said you’re leaving in such a date. And wish you luck and said that Slingsby had a job for me if I wanted it. That’s how it all worked.
The system. Yes, we’ll get on to that when we got on to when you first left school. What do you think you gained from that school? Was it a good school, did you think it was a good school?
R- No, it wasn’t as good as the ordinary schools. It wasn't as good as Skipton school because Church schools never had any money for extra activities. There wasn’t swimming lessons, there wasn’t any woodwork classes, there wasn't anything for the girls. Only just the three Rs. You see, there was nothing like that. Well, you talked to lads at Skipton and they were having all sorts, they got a far better education in the County schools than we did at Carleton. Now my daughter’s moving from Mansfield to a place called Tickhill and there’s two schools there, there's a church school and a County school, and a choice. Well I says for God's sake don't send him to a
church school. Because they haven’t any facilities. And they've been to look and enquired at both schools and she says “You are right dad, they’d nothing at the church school.” At the county school they've outdoor
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activities, all sorts of things that they haven’t at the church school at all.
Did you like school?
R- Yes, because I were always good. And I were far ahead, I’m not swanking but 1 were far ahead of anybody else.
I can believe that.
R- Yes, because you went to work half time, there half time at the mill and school half time and after I were twelve it were just wasted, I’d done all that there were to do at that school. I just sat and read, passed me time on.
You’ll have been a big reader will you?
R- Yes and my wife is. She’ll do eight books a week. Of course she has a lot of time to pass on. But she is a great reader and she can remember.
That’s it, good thing.
R- She’s brainier than I am, she is.
What were the teachers strict about at school?
R- Discipline, you daren’t step out of line. And there were our teacher, the headmaster were a man called Mr Lilly and there were a man called Baghurst, he came from Bradley on a bicycle every day. And then there were two more teachers, Mr Lilly’s daughters, Edith, called Miss Edith Lilly and the other one, we just called her Miss Lilly. I don’t know what her Christian name were. That were what the staff, oh, there were Miss Bridge, took the infants, the very youngest children. They got the usual things, it were reading and writing and arithmetic and then grammar, but very little.
(30 min)
If they punished you, what were the punishment?
R- Cane. You went out and you had the cane, held your hand out. And the women teachers had a blackboard cleaner, you know a block of wood with felt on and they’d rap your knuckles with that.
Did you have a chance, from there, to go to grammar school?
R- No you weren’t asked. They knew you’d have to go to the mill and earn some money. But several did, the postmaster’s son and a guard on the railway and two other persons, a girl called Dorothy Garnett, her father were a barber, and a tackler [his child] at the mill and a big pal of Slingsby’s, he depended on Slingsby who got the [scholarships]. You see there weren’t many places, it were what they call a foundation scholarship and there were only one or two. That’s what I can remember, not above half a dozen in all my school career that went to the grammar school. Well, I’d a brother, youngest brother, he got word that he’d passed for the grammar school and he…
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Who were that, Cyril?
R – Edwin, he is the youngest.
Edwin, yes.
R- Got word that he passed for the Grammar school and he’d to go one Saturday morning to a selection, in front of a selection board. And they asked him various questions and he answered them correctly. And they say “What does your father do?” He says “I haven’t got a father.” Well, how did he manage, how did they live? Well, he’d brothers and sisters who worked and that finished it. You see they needed clothes provided and so he finished it. He passed, he got word and the headmaster asked him and he said “Oh no, they’ve turned me down.” He were amazed were the headmaster, But he said, you’ve passed. There might have been twenty for ten places, it were just the fact that we’d more money, he’d have been to clothe. We couldn’t have afforded to provide him with grammar school clothes and it just wouldn’t be the class that were going to the grammar school. He’s never forgotten that.
No he wouldn't have done. Have you any idea how old your parents were when they left school.
R - I haven't.
No. And when you'd left school did you go to night school?
R- No. Now me mother said to me “Would you like to go to night school?” And going to night school meant walking after you’d done your work at the mill, walking to Skipton, summer and winter and walking back and doing homework twice a week. And I said no and she said all right and didn’t press it any further.
Yes. One practical thing that I’ve heard about that which has struck me about that is the fact that in them days you’d be working to .. now would it be half past five? Half past five.
R- Half past five, half past five.
And night school started, was it at about seven o'clock?
R- Seven o’clock, yes.
So in other words, by the time you'd got home, dashed a cup of tea down, got washed and changed, and got off up the road …
R- Yes and walked two miles.
And walked, yes. And bad weather.
R- No bicycles, none. And I said no.
Yes, did she seem ..
R- I hadn't really given it a thought but I said no. It wasn’t the fact of walking I don’t suppose, but that’s what it would have entailed. But I knew when I’d left school at 13 and started work in the mill at six o’clock and hard at it until half past five when I got me tea, I used to sit down and sleep until bedtime. Then me mother would waken me up, I’d get washed and go to bed. And that were it. What time had you for learning at night school?
Yes, when you were at school did you go home for your dinner?
R- Yes, because we were only fifty yards away.
Yes, that’s it, aye.
R- We could come out of the school yard, climbed a wall and across a field and we were in at our back door.
Do you ever remember anything about the inspector coming, can you remember the school inspectors coming?
R- Yes. You had to [answer questions] but it were mainly on religious subjects, a church school. You had to say the Lord’s Prayer, he’d pick odd ones out and say such a Commandment and you sang a hymn and then a report would come in in due course, ‘We were well up in religious studies.’ And that were the sum total of it.
How about the attendance man?
R - Well he did come round and there used to be a board put up every day with the attendance numbers. Why on a board, chalked on a board, I don’t know but it always used to be up the attendance were 99% or 100% or 81%
Perhaps on bonus ..
R- Yes. And they used to close the school if there were a measles epidemic or things like that.
How about medical inspections, you know .. the nit nurse, or anything like that.
R- Well, she used to bother more with the girls you see. She just like gave a glance at the boys and, but it were girls that she bothered with.
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And did your parents ever visit the school?
R- Never.
Never?
R- Never.
Did they show any interest in your work that you were doing at the school? You know, in your school work.
R- No, you didn’t get any school reports, nothing.
So the school never got in touch with them about how you were getting on?
R- No, they’d no interest in it. It was between the mill owner and the school master.
Yes. So the only job that your teacher would suggest that you did was to go into the mill.
R- Yes they told, he told everybody that. And if your parents hadn't a job for you, something else, well farmer’s sons went on to the farm or went out to another farm you see, working for somebody. And occasionally, one lad went as apprentice joiner, that's about it. And he used to cycle to his work and he attended night school. But I don’t suppose that he ended up any better or any worse than anybody else.
Aye, that’s it.
R- But I know one lad that were in my class, they have a word for it now, he used to write his words backwards.
Aye, dyslexic is it?
R- Cat and dog they were, he could never get them right. And he used to get caned and played hell with but he finished up a wealthy man. So I says, “What does it matter?” I'm not saying a wealthy man but more money than I have. He went into farming.
Who was that Horace?
R- He went into farming and his brother went into farming and they were real dummies and they’d no farming connections but they didn’t… they’d two farms and did very well. Worked hard, very hard workers, but he could never write.
On the whole Horace, looking back, was it a good education would you say?
R- Well, it was as good as we know anything about. But it’s not like they’re getting now, anybody that is interested and brainy they have a chance now. And I don’t, I never thought about it, was I particularly brainy or not, but my wife says I am. And one thing, I did use to read a lot, I don’t do as much now but when there used to he those Brain of Britain come out, not on the television, on the wireless I could answer the questions before the chaps that were being questioned could answer them. Not them all but lots of things and when they come on now I know a lot of the
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(40 min)
answers that they don’t. But I’m no good when they get on to the Greek and ancient history. I don’t know these other persons, I know part but as I say I were fairly good, I were better than any of the others round about at the school because I were way ahead of them, it were no trouble to me. And I’ve a nephew, a grandson that’s particularly bright at school and the teachers said “He’s always right it’s no trouble to him.” And he gets to have a book and he gets stars, well he gets half a dozen of these stars at once. And when I see him I’ll say “How are you doing at school James?” “Oh all right” or “Oh we do this and that.” So I said “You must work hard James.” So I’ll give him something and say that’s for working so hard and he told me he didn’t work hard, it was easy. That’s just what he says, it’s easy. That’s what he says, he’s not swanking, he’s not a bighead, he’s only ten. Because he says it’s easy.
Yes. There are some people it does come easy to, there’s no doubt about it. Do you, well there’s two things, do you… I’m asking two questions at once. Do you regret at all not having had the chance to go further with your education. Do you think you could have? Do you think you could have gone further with your education?
R- I could, but I’ve don’t regret it. Because I always, if I’m talking to my wife I always say this, “It’s no good regretting something. I might have fallen off my bike when I were twenty and killed myself.” I’ve no regrets.
No, I know exactly what you mean.
R- I haven’t had it easy but I’ve never bemoaned the fact. We’ve kept it straight, we’ve never bought anything until we’d the money to buy it, never a pennorth of anything. There’s nobody comes here for debts, never has done. No insurance man, no penny a week or shilling a week or anything. If we get anything there’s money to pay for it and if we get a job done and the bill comes the money is there the day after. I don’t think I’d happen be as concerned as my wife, but the day after, “Get this money down.” And we brought up our daughter the same way.
There’s not a lot of it about.
R- No.
SCG/19 February 2003
6,083 words.
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 79/AD/07
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 9TH OF JULY 1979 AT 16 COWGILL STREET, EARBY. THE INFORMANT IS HORACE THORNTON, TAPER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Right, we'll carry on Horace with some questions on the neighbourhood. If someone was ill, or died, or was confined, did the neighbours help?
R - Yes, they all wired in, not same as it is today, nobody does anything now, they leave it all to the health service, they don’t do anything that I can see on around here, it’s just left to the doctors and the nurses. But when I were a lad everybody mucked in and did their bit staying up with people and taking the meals and looking after the kiddies, and it were a right village life, they all looked after one another.
What do you think the reasons were for that Horace?
R - Well, there were nobody else to do it. And they did their own doctoring as far as they could do with children. People used to call an elderly 1ady and say what do you think is the matter with them? and she’d say, Oh, it’s such a thing and such a thing and give ‘em this and give ‘em the other. But nothing of that now.
Do you think part of it was the fact that people realised that it was
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only by helping others that they’d stand any chance of getting any help themselves if they needed it?
R - Well I don't think it were that. It were just good nature, you help anybody, you see they knew them, you were neighbours and in a village, a lot of the people are your relations.
Why do you think things are different now? You say that you think things are different now.
R- Well, when the National Health Act came in and you pay so much a week and they said you’d pay so much more money, everything voluntary finished then. There’ll be no collection, there’ll he no giving, there’ll be no twopence a week for the hospital. Everything’ll be paid for, ambulance service, everything, and people think that’s the case now, everything’s paid for and there’s no need for anybody else to bother.
If somebody had to go to the hospital from Carleton how would they get there? You know, I mean, whereas now you’d ring up and your friendly local ambulance would land at the door, what happened in those days?
R- Well, there were a carrier, a local carrier, he ran a cab at weekends, Saturday afternoon, from Carleton to Skipton and they’d be taken in that to the hospital. And then, if they had to go to Leeds, well he were taking them to the station and on the train.
I’ve had old people talking in Earby about taking people on a handcart to the station and putting them on the train and taking….
R – Yes, what they called the litter.
Litter?
R- I’ve never seen it but that what they did and it were the St John’s Ambulance, that were volunteers and they called the ambulance man from their work, and they took them to the train and then I suppose they took the litter with them. They’d be in the guard’s van and then they’d get it out at Burnley and wheel them up to the hospital on that through the streets.
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Yes, that's from Earby. Yes, you’ve heard about that have you?
R- Yes, from Earby. I’ve heard about it but I’ve never seen it.
And was there much borrowing went on? Among neighbours?
R- Well, oh well if you ran out of anything and the shops were closed you could borrow something then but not otherwise.
What sort of things were borrowed Horace?
R- Well, if you found out you’d run out of salt and flour, anything like that, because you could easily do that, forgetfulness, but I can’t over remember much of it you see? I can’t. And never borrowing money.
Never?
R- Well, I don’t suppose people had money to lend, that were where it were.
Did neighbours visit often? Did thy visit you often?
R- Yes. In our street we wore related and intermarried, we went into one another’s houses. And we’d relations all round the village and my mother used to go from one to the other and they came to our house.
(5 min)
Were they invited or did they just drop in?
R- They just dropped in, they just went in, it were open house. They tapped at the door and walked in, it were “Come on in!”
Do you think that applied in other streets as well?
R- Yes, they would.
Yes. And neighbours, what did they do, come round and have a drink of tea?
R- yes, of course they would. But there's quite a lot in Earby now, that’s done. Though we don’t, we're not Earby people.
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Aye, ‘off comed uns’. Aye.
R- Yes, we are not related to anybody here.
That’s it. Did they talk on the doorstep Horace, was there a lot of…?
R- Summer time they might sit out. They’d sit out and talk, but adults, well, the men, they used to congregate at what they called the Swan Corner in groups and stand and talk. And ever what they called ‘over t’town’, that were over the other end of the village. They’d go over t’town and there’d be always a group on the bridge there, over by the mill dam.
And a thing about that, for instance, Barlick, on a Saturday night, Church Street used to he lined with stalls and they used to keep selling until there was nobody about. It used to be ten or eleven o’clock on a Summer’s night. Was there anything like that
In Carleton?
R- There were no stalls in Carleton, you went to Skipton And there were that at Skipton, up Skipton High Street. And they were selling stuff up cheap, herrings at twenty for sixpence. People’d come from Leeds, fish market you see, twenty for sixpence for herring and selling the meat off.
And is this Saturday night?
R- Saturday night, and vegetables. But you see, at Saturday now everything is dead turned five o'clock. When the shops began to close at five o'clock, the people come home. And the stalls clearing up and taking the stalls down, everything’s clear by six o’clock.
Yes it is.
R- Only the rubbish left.
Yes you are right. And in the old days that wouldn’t be so. They’d carry on as long as there were people about.
R- Yes. The shop assistants were in while eight and nine o’clock. My wife worked in a dress shop at Colne then, and everyone had to be capable of sewing, what they called alteration hands. And after the shop was closed at Saturday night, six or seven o’clock, they stay and [work]. And mourning orders, any night for mourning orders they used to stay while nine o’clock until they’d finished altering the black dresses. Or any night if they sold a coat that wanted shortening or letting out a bit they’d to stay and do it, nine o’clock.
Of course, a lot of people would work all Saturday in those days wouldn’t they.
(10 min)
R- Yes. And then they come home and did the cleaning up, half past twelve at Saturday, and they did their cleaning up and then they rushed off after tea to Skipton, walked it to Skipton, do shopping and have a look round to see if there’s anything cheap.
Aye. Can you over remember any quarrelling or fighting in the village about anything;
R- Well, it used to he Friday night or Saturday night when they’d had some money and they came home, they were fighting wanting to get in the house and if they’re a family, fighting one with another.
Drunk presumably?
R- Yes. And the village policeman’d hear it and he’d stand round the corner listening to them till they’d quietened down and see if it were getting out of hand, and if it were he’d go in and try and quieten them.
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Can you remember the name of the constable when you were a lad?
R- Yes, I remember three. There were Garside, and then he were followed with a man called Spencer, and then the last one while I were there was Hughes.
Hughes, yes.
R- He was a big rough beggar. He’d come from up Slaidburn way. He’d had to deal with poachers up there. But he were all right. They’d sent him to Carleton to finish his time out, and [he was] most unlike a policeman.
Can you remember any really poor children at school?
R- Well, we were all poor, we were poor.
Was there anybody there, did you know anybody, any children of your own age that you regarded as worse off than yourself?
R- Well, children don’t study those things. We were all children together and you didn’t say to them, and even if you did, “We haven’t had any breakfast today.” But some were worse dressed than others you see.
Were they treated any differently do you think?
R- No, you were all pals together.
Right. And what kind of families .. did you think of any kind of family as a rough family?
R- No you didn’t.
There you are. How about a respectable family. What would your definition be of a respectable family?
R- Well, the policeman and his wife, they only had one boy. Well, he didn’t mess about with the boys in the village didn’t the policeman’s son. Though the postmaster, he had two lads and he were one of them that got a scholarship, a foundation scholarship, he went to the Grammar School and he got into a bank und finished up as Mayor of Keighley, a lad called Wilfred Dale.
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Dale? Yes.
R- Dale, they kept the post office.
Yes. Did you have to have position or money to be respectable?
R- No. There’s decent people you know, that can be decent without having money or good clothes. You can he respectable without that.
Yes. And what do you think are the hallmarks of being respectable in that context?
R- Well, you wouldn’t think of stealing, only a few apples. But village life’s different, it was when I were a lad. You all went to the same school, you all played together and .. some got various jobs but there wasn’t much you see. A few went out of the village, same as the people that got scholarships. Quite a lot of people left Carleton and went over to Barnoldswick you see? It were a poor paying shop were Carleton, well they paid what they liked and it were bad work, not so much poor pay, bad work. If it’s bad work you can’t make anything.
That’s it. Can you remember any soup kitchens?
(15 min)
R- No.
Anything like that?
R- No, nothing.
What do you know about the workhouse?
R- Nothing, only the tramps that came through and they were going to the workhouse, that were what we were told. And, morning, I don’t know, happen between eleven and twelve o'clock there’d he two or three coming through and they’d be going over the tops to Colne and do a bit of begging you see.
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Did you over hear anybody talking about the workhouse? I mean because in those days, if somebody was destitute that was where they’d finish up, the workhouse, wasn’t it?
R- Yes.
And I’ll be right in saying that people didn’t really want to go in the workhouse did they.
R- But if they’re on their own there were nothing else. But they didn't send the parents to the workhouse or any relations.
Did you ever know anybody that went to the workhouse?
R- No I didn’t.
How did you, well, really that’s a superfluous question that “How did women manage to make a living?” We know that very well from what your mother did. And you did have relations nearby because the street was full of them.
R - Yes.
This is a question I hate but, if you were forced to put your finger on it Horace, what social class would you say that your family came from?
R- Well, my grandfather was in business, Whiteoak, and they’d be considered wealthy people, there were nobody else in Carleton had a business like them. They had, there were no other business in Carleton only the shoemaker and the tailor and the people in the Post Office and one or two small shops. Well my grandfather’d be one of the top men. There were a big woodyard and they did all the joinery work all round the area up to Lothersdale and any house building, they were in at it. You see, these houses that I were talking about, they wouldn’t do the building work but it’s been a joint effort between this mason that were called Smith, and Whiteoaks the joiner and that’d be Whiteoak’s share for house building, you know.
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[They built] Chapel Street. And those houses were built and key delivered for £90
and they're being sold now for £9,000 with a few new windows in and a bath set and electric light.
So what would you say, what class would you say you were then, your family?
R- Well they were working class, they all had to work.
Yes that’s it, but top end happen?
R- Yes, but there’d be no one else in Carleton that was as well off as Whiteoaks.
What kind of jobs did the other men in your street have?
R- Well there were spinners and weavers and card room hands.
They all worked at the mill?
R- Yes.
If you lived in Carleton, were there; there’d be very few chances of anything else if you didn’t, if you weren’t farm manning it’d be the mill or nowt would it?
(20 min)
R- That were it. There was Slingsby were waiting for you when you came of age.
Aye, yes.
R- And when there got to be a shortage they used to import them out of Lancashire, spinners and weavers. You see, quite a lot of people left Carleton and went to Barnoldswick, you’ll know lots of people in Barnoldswick that came from Carleton. There were Smiths and there were Kays and various other names, quite a lot of Smiths. And there were ever so many Kays. Oh yes, quite a lot. They used to always come over for Carleton Feast. Harpers, they were Carleton people, Bill Harper .. He got to be Secretary of the co-op wasn’t he?
Something like that, aye. [Craven Herald 25/01/1929. Short biography of W E Harper with picture. He was a member of BUDC for 23 years and was Chairman of the Finance Committee when he died. Retired from the post of Secretary of the Barnoldswick Cooperative Society in 1928. Born in Carleton 1865.]
R- And on the Council. And another Harper had something to do with that picture house, one of the Harpers, one of the picture houses .. Yes.
They could have had. Aye, Palace were it? Aye.
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R- Yes, there were Harpers confectioners, Mary Harper, about my age.
Yes. And you say they used to bring, used to bring men in out of Lancashire?
R- Yes, and Slingsby used to have a lot of houses you see. They’d put them into these houses.
What was thought of as being the rough end of the town?
R- Well, you didn’t dare go into New Street because it were full of tramp weavers and they were drinking and fighting there. “Don't go up there, there's bugs!” See, that were the cry, “Don't, .. keep away from New street!”
Aye. And which’d be the better end of the town.
R- Well, there were different types of houses, some houses were newer than others. But there were only one row of houses built in Carleton during my time there, and it were Louvaine Terrace and you can tell what year that were built, the sacking of Louvaine during the First World War, that were where the man got the name from.
Aye, Louvaine, I’ve seen that name, I've seen that name and I've never realized where it came from. Who would he considered the most important people in the village.
R- Well, the parson and then the people at the big houses. But the parson were in with everybody you see. But there were a family called Empsons, they were wealthy people but they were more down to earth, mix with everybody, very nice.
How do you spell that Horace?
R- E m p s o n, Empson, yes.
Empson. Aye.
R- They’d been out in America. They had a ranch there. They retired and came back to Carleton. And there son, he’ll not be living yet, Tony Empson, he had the ranch out there but he’ll be dead by now. He’d be ten or fifteen year older than I am. I don’t know what happened
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to them because when they died that were the finish of them you see as far as Carleton were concerned.
Did you ever come into contact with them?
R- Oh yes, they were right church people. Yes.
(25 min)
Aye. What did the children, what did you kids think about the police? I think I've asked you that before .. Anyway I’ll ask you again, what did you think about the police?
R- Well, you were frightened of them, you didn't let them see that but the only policeman had been there a bit. They didn't bother us. They were always there you see, the police were always there either morning or afternoon or night and you hadn’t to stray so far before they were around. But when the war finished, at Carleton, they started recruiting policemen and they sent a new one, it were his first place, send him to Carleton. And the people when they turned out at the Swan Hotel, Swan Inn, they used to come outside and stand about on the causeway or anywhere. And Sagar they called him, this policeman, he used to come along, and “Come on, move on there!” Not a soul about wanting to get past “Get off this causeway, get along!” And he kept doing this. Well, all these fellows straight out of the army ... someone who went the day war was broken out and come through it all. And then being moved on with a young policeman! There was a fellow called Arthur Higgins, he just simply got hold of him and up-skittled him. They were going to arrest him and another went across home into the road and brought a revolver out, fully loaded, on him. A chap called Walter Middleton. And there were a right hullabaloo, but he’d asked for it you know. Just fancy being out there, being shot at, and they'd had enough of being ordered about. And there were a right hullabaloo. And they had him down on the ground and were punching [kicking] his helmet round, and there were a fellow across the road and he came to the door and stood there, and this policeman said “I demand you to help me in the name of the King!” And he says “Bugger the King!” and went in. And so he were fined £5 were Arthur Higgins for assaulting the policeman and he were sent to prison for a month and I don’t know whether Walter Middleton got time or not. But Sagar were moved immediately and they sent Hughes then, an old man you see, they had a bit of sense. But who were going to stand for that, in a village, there weren’t a cat about, they weren’t rowdy or anything, but they just happened to come out of the door and stand…
And stand about. Yes.
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R- Stand about, “Move on there!” Just move a bit and then stop again. “Go on, move!” and then started pushing…
Would there have been anyone living in the village that your mother would have preferred that you didn’t marry?
R- No, mother never interfered in any way. She never interfered what we did. Never any “Don’t do this and don’t do that.” We didn’t disobey her and she didn’t give any orders but we respected her. Not one of us did anything to upset her.
Yes. From your knowledge of her is there, would she have been upset if you would marry somebody… I don’t know what to say really you know. Would anything have upset her? Would it have upset her if you’d married a certain person?
R- Well .. my brother married a girl from up in Durham, the oldest brother. My wife came from Colne, me youngest brother married a girl from Skipton. And I have a brother and sister that didn’t get married. She wouldn’t have said anything, not a word, you make your bed and you lie on it. That’s the sort of thing, but she’d help you any way she could.
Yes. Can you remember anyone being called a real gentleman or a real lady?
R- Well, there were lots of people .. they'd call then ‘Gentleman Jim’. Silver mounted stick and kid gloves and spats. But you just used to think… I realise now they were pansies see. You thought like they were a bit blown .. but you see, dressed up and fancy ways and a silver mounted stick and .. but you didn’t know, you didn't know anything about that when you were a lad.
Aye, can you ever remember anybody saying, say, your mother saying “So and so’s a real gentleman.” or “A real lady.”
(20 min)
R- Well Empsons were because they’d come and, come to your house and come in and sit down. And I can remember them talking about when Empsons first came to Carleton. The Slingsbys were Conservatives and Empsons were Conservative and all the rest of the well to do people would be. And they were having a meeting, my father didn't tell me this but it were repeated, what me father said. If there were anything wanted doing to the Conservative Club, any decorating or painting or repairs, they’d have a whip round amongst the committee and the members. And Slingsbys, all living in big houses, it’d be half a crown for one and happen 5/- for another. Now Mr Empson, the first meeting he were at, he said “I’ll start it off.” £5. And they were nice people, he were a gentleman. Wherever you were he’d raise his hat to you, men or women, “Good Morning Mr Thornton.” or Mrs Thornton. And Miss Empson, we always called her Miss Empson, the daughter, well, they had two daughters, one of them got married and went to live away, but whenever she came over she always come to visit me mother, “Come in and sit down.” Now whether it was because she’d been left so poor… but she did.
Very good. We’ll get on to health then Horace. Now then, this is where we always have a laugh. Did your family nave any special cures for illness?
R- Me mother only had, whatever we ailed, she had a thermometer. Whatever we ailed she took our temperature. If we’d a temperature we had the doctor immediately and if we hadn’t she’d set to and cure it herself. A cold, anything else, but no temperature, no doctor.
Aye. Did you have the doctor often?
R- Well with children .. well you can’t really tell and they didn’t put it down in a diary. But we had one doctor from Skipton, a Doctor Kitchen. And in our front room we had an old fire guard round. You know, used to fix them round the fire with a hook in them. And it had a brass rail on top. And he used to come to our house and he always used to sit on this. Mother used to go mad after he’d gone, bending this brass rail, but he always used to sit on that. And when he left .. there used to be a skating rink at Skipton, roller skating, and when he left he had a farewell dance and supper for all his patients. Now it were a right affair were that, everybody were invited, all his patients from all round the district. I know my father and mother went and it were to Doctor Kitchen’s farewell. And he wasn't an old man retiring, he might have been there eight or ten years but I never forgot that. It was such a big event you know, going to a ball.
Did you have to pay the doctor Horace?
R - You had to pay him something, I don’t know what. But I know they used, people used to dread the doctor’s bill coming. Well the doctors here in our time, they employed a man to go round collecting sixpence a week.
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(35 min)
but we were healthy when we was first married, we’d only one doctor's bill before it came in free doctoring and it were for £6 for our daughter. That were the only doctor’s bill we ever had and it looked a lot of money.
Did your mother, you know, the family, belong to any Friendly Society. You know, for the bills you know, doctor’s bills?
R- Well there were the Ancient Order of Foresters but you didn’t get your Doctor’s bills paid. If you were ill you got a few shilling a week. Course it’d be ten shilling a week probably. And that was the sick club in Carleton. I suppose the main of Carleton would be in it. Then when the National Health Service came in it all dropped off.
Was your mother in that?
R- No, they hadn’t women, it were all men.
Oh I see. Something like the Buffs. [The Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes founded in 1822 in the Harp Tavern, Great Russell Street, London. It was a self-help society formed by theatrical workers and over the years developed into a Friendly Society. Still active today and seen by many as the working man’s Masonic society]
R - Yes, but Buffs are a drinking club, Foresters hadn’t to.
Oh, Foresters are TT?
R- Well, not supposed to be but it you'd, if anything happened and you had been drinking there wore nothing for you. But I know my uncles were in and me father’s been in and when we come old enough we were in. And as time went on there got to he fewer and fewer members so it wore closed down and all the money were shared out among the living members. And there were a man called Ira Whitehead, he was the secretary, he used to come round paying your sick money when you were ill and if you happened to be caught, seen about carrying a parcel or anything you weren't ill. And [if you were] out after, I think it were seven o'clock in Winter or ten o'clock in Summer, that was taboo.
It your dad, when you dad was weaving…
R- Spinning.
Spinning, sorry spinning. If he was off sick did to get any sick pay?
R- Out of the Foresters?
Apart, yes, but from the firm?
R- Oh no, that were known thing, unknown thing.
No. I don’t think I’ve asked you Horace, what killed your father? Because he weren’t very old when he died were he?
R- Pneumonia and there weren’t a cure for pneumonia then.
That’s it, you did tell me Horace.
R- It were a very hot job spinning, terribly hot you see. And working with bare feet, and cotton trousers and cotton shirt probably, and then coming out in winter time. And there were no cure for it, it were just congestion of the lungs and that were it.
That’s it. Your dad’d he covered by Lloyd George? When it came in were your father covered by Lloyd George?
R- Well, it came in in 1912 and he died in 1916.
That’s it aye.
R- I think it were 1912 when Lloyd George started.
[ National Insurance Act (1 &2 Geo.V, c.55) established health and unemployment insurance to be paid for by contributions from the State, employers and employees. The health insurance, which came into operation on 15th July 1912, provided sickness, disablement and maternity benefits, a medical practitioner service and free treatment for tuberculosis, for all insured people but not for their dependants. The scheme, administered through existing friendly societies, trade unions and local insurance committees, was compulsory for all employees earning less than £160 per year (raised to £250 in 1919, and to £420 in 1942). The unemployment scheme applied only to industries where unemployment was recurrent. The act permitted a small sum of money to be spent on research. ]
Yes, you are right.
R- So he’d four years. And well, there’d be death benefits out of the sick club but it wouldn’t he much.
Can you ever remember anybody drawing any money for workman's compensation?
R- Yes, there were a man killed at Skipton Rock, a stone fell on him ..
When was he….
R- He were a quarry man. Probably it’d be about the time I got married.
What year about?
R- Well, I were married in 1936 and he were killed with a fall of stone. His wife got £400.
You can’t, you don’t know of anything earlier than that?
R- No..
Compo.
R- I remember that because he lived near to us you see. And he’d one or two children.
Yes that’s it. You mentioned earlier paying twopence a week to the hospital. Did you belong to a hospital scheme?
R- It were a voluntary scheme but they stopped it out [of your wage] at work. You started at a penny a week and then …
Did you pay this while you were in Carleton?
R- Yes. And then it got to twopence a week and if your wife had to see
(40 min)
a specialist, you went to the mill and the cashier would make your paper out. And then there were another thing .. they used to ..well I don't know how it happened but a Mr Eddie in Carleton and Slingsbys, and Mr Empson, they could give you a recommend they called them. “Going and getting your recommend” from these people to go into hospital, to Skipton or to Leeds. And they must have been subscribers to the hospital and then
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be able to have so many, well I call, I look on 'em as free passes but they called them recommends..
Yes. I wonder if that would be anything to do with, would Carleton come under Skipton Rural District Council? Or would it come under…
R- Rural District, yes. But it were people that had money and they must have given we'll say £5 or £10 a year to the hospital. Because they were all voluntary hospitals then.
Yes. And of course Skipton would be your nearest hospital wouldn’t it?
R- Yes, Skipton Cottage Hospital.
Where about was that?
R- Up Sackville Street, you know where Gargrave Road is?
Gargrave Road, yes.
R- Going up out of Skipton to, well, Sackville Street lies between there and Dewhurst’s Mill down .. you know where Dewhurst’s Mill is?
Yes.
R- It were a street in between there, fairly high up it were and they built this as a hospital and now it’s the Rural District .. well, it’s part of the Council Offices now, but the Rural District Council Offices before this last [reorganisation]...
Aye that’s it, before the boundary alteration.
R- Aye, it were a right mishap.
And I think I remember you saying earlier that you didn’t have any funeral insurance did you then, any funeral insurance? No?
R- No.
Did anyone in the family ever have an operation at home?
R - No, never.
No. Have you ever heard of anybody having an operation at home?
No never, but I remember I had one at home. We used to get tallow in barrels. It were running through the bung as liquid and then when you wanted some more tallow you chopped the barrel top out with a chisel. And t’labourer had done it one time and left it all jagged edges, and I were mixing and we had a narrow shovel to dig it out and I dug in you know, like that and one of these spikes stuck in here and it came up just like a little pimple and bled. And all I did I just went like that, went on with me work you know, wiped the tallow over it, went on with the work. And after about a couple of days started throbbing and me hand come up, and I went to the doctor and he were a drip, “It’ll be all right Mr Thornton. Put this bandage on.” So I did and it didn’t go no better and then .. “Try some kaolin.” So I sent to the chemist and got some kaolin and started poulticing, and ... no better. And it were paining all up me arm and an awful head ache and I were going on working. Well, I came home one night and showed me wife
(850)
(45 min)
it’d red lines right up here, and a big lump under me arm. And there were a District Nurse lived down here and my wife went for her and asked her to come and look and she said “Oh it’s serious, I’ll get on to the doctor” I won’t mention his name, he’s dead. And she said “I’ll get on to the doctor, I’ll see if I can find him.” And she rung him up and she come up again and she said “No, nobody knows where he is.” And I was in a state and finally he landed in, a knock come at t’door at midnight, he weren't quite with it. “Let me have a look Mr Thornton.” And I showed him. “Oh, it’s in a bit of a mess. I’ll see what I can do.” And he just put his hand into his pocket and pulled a pen knife out, and opened it up. “Where’s your finger?” He just got it on the kitchen table lied down and started ramming this knife into it, just turn it up, and my wife says “For God's sake leave him alone!” And he says “Well, I can't seem to get anything to move. It’ll have to be the hospital. And, well as soon as I can get you in to it, he says, right away if I can. I says “Nay, leave me while morning, if I’m still alive!” And this other doctor landed next morning about eight o’clock, took me to Burnley, and the doctor looked, “Oh he says – that’ll have to come off!”
Aye.
R- “Oh no, you mon’t take that off.” I said. “My living depends on that” you know, it’s your main finger. Anyway he says “We’ll try what we can do.” Anyway he put me out, I came round and I was in a bed and I were 26 weeks and I’d to go on every day. And the first time they took the bandage off, well I’d to go in on the Sunday. It were just like egg yolk, a mass of egg yolk all round, all round here. And they cut that open and cut that open these two fingers right up. It were just like egg yolk, thick egg yolk. And I were 26 week off me work through that lot.
Yes, and what year were that about?
R- Nineteen forty eight.
Well you’d be, obviously you’d be covered by Lloyd George then. Aye.
R- Yes. Well I were covered by Lloyd George before 1948.
Oh yes.
R- But it were when the right hospital service came in.
Yes, that's it, aye. But still, six months is a long while to he off with a poisoned finger isn’t it.
R- Yes, that’s the operation I had on the kitchen table.
Aye
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SCG/06 March 2003
6,075 words
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 79/AD/08
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 9TH OF JULY 1979 AT 16 COWGILL STREET, EARBY. THE INFORMANT IS HORACE THORNTON, TAPER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Right, we’ll carry on with the health bit. Can you remember any of your brothers or sister being born?
R - Yes but I wasn’t at home.
Ah, now when you say you weren’t at home what…
R - Sent to me grandmother’s. I didn’t know what were happening, and I went to me grandmother’s. And when I got up at morning an aunt of mine said “Your mother's got a little chocolate sister.” You know I suppose they are red, aren’t they?
Aye, pickled walnuts.
R - Actually red. It weren’t really a Pakistani . But it were red I suppose, and that were the first I knew about it.
Aye. I have always said they look like pickled walnuts when they’re first born.
R- Yes, and wrinkled.
Yes. And was that with the doctor or the midwife?
R- I don't know about your midwife but I think they used to call the doctor in. And, it wouldn't be a professional midwife, it’d be neighbours.
(50)
Was there a midwife in Carleton.
R- Well, grandmother used to go and neighbours used to go. There’s a lady died in our street, Mrs. Kay, three weeks since, a month since, she used to go round nursing, and she were 89 when she died. And she used to go round nursing and laying them out and the lot.
Was there any disease that you particularly dreaded catching?
R - Scarlet fever, I had a brother that had scarlet fever. They took him away to the Infectious Hospital at Skipton for infectious diseases. And it affected his eyes, he’s always had bad eyesight since. And he came out in a rash as they do and the skin used to peel off them, that were one of the symptoms. But that were the only one that went away for anything.
And you’d be put in quarantine then wouldn’t you?
R- Yes I suppose so. Yes, we’d have to stay off school.
(100)
How about diphtheria?
R- We’d no diphtheria. I can remember one lad having it. He were the landlord at the Swan Inn’s son, a lad called Jack Coates. And the doctor hadn’t [a car] he came on horseback in those days, a chap called Fisher. And he came from Skipton on his horse and cut his throat open and put a tube in, he must have been choking. And that were the only case I can remember anything about diphtheria. And whooping cough were rife, you could bear them whooping away you know, they started, started on a low note and went high and high and high and high and high till it faded out. It were exhausting.
Have you ever come across any cures for whooping cough?
R- Mother used to put them over t’tar pan.
That’s it. Aye, either the tar pan or the retorts at the gas works, one of the two.
R- Yes. Aye it were the tar pan at Carleton if they’d a whooping cough. They seemed to be in summer time when there were tar spraying.
Yes that’s it. That’s fairly common. Did you know anything about typhus and dysentery and things like that?
(150)
(5 min)
R- No.
Can you remember ever having any bad stomachs? Or you know, the trots, having the runs, you know, having diarrhoea?
R- Aye you would have, and mother’d say “What have you been eating. Have you been eating green apples or what have you been doing?” And I suppose you just went on till it dried up, but as a rule they used to give us ---
That’s it aye.
R- My mother...
Aye, either that or else the old stand by, what was it? Kaolin and chlorodyne.
R- Kaolin.
It’s chlorodyne but it’s morphine
R- Chlorodyne, yes it is, aye.
It’s a morphine derivative. Yes, and good stuff.
R- Yes it is.
Yes. You can still get it but it isn’t, I don’t think it has chlorodyne in it now, it has something else in.
[Chloroform made its appearance in 1847 as a reliable anaesthetic. In 1856, chloroform and morphine were bottled to make Dr Collis-Brown's Chlorodyne, to ease cholera, diarrhoea, coughs, influenza, neuralgia, rheumatism, bronchitis and other ills. In 2003 you can still find chemist’s who, if they know you, will make up a bottle of kaolin and morphine.]
R- Oh it has, it has.
Has it. Aye.
R - Last Summer I had diarrhoea. And I can’t think what we’d had but I had it and my wife hadn’t. And one of the daughter’s children were taken ill and she rung up to say would we go. And so I went and left t’wife at home and I know as soon as I got there I went to the chemist and said I wanted a bottle of diarrhoea mixture and it were this chlorodyne and kaolin and it sinks to the bottom.
Oh it’s good stuff.
(200)
R- I know it is. It soon cured me.
It is that, one dose’ll cure me, it’s marvellous. Did you know any children with rickets?
R- I suppose there were people deformed, bow legs and bent legs. I suppose that were rickets.
Yes, almost sure.
R- It would be. That was supposed to be shortage of milk, weren’t it?
Well yes.
R- Yes, but they thought so.
Deficiency of vitamin D.
R- Calcium isn’t it?
[Modern thinking is that rickets is caused by a deficiency of vitamin D which is essential in young children because it facilitates calcium take-up into the bones which hardens them. If the bones remain soft they bend causing the typical bow legs of rickets. Vitamin D is produced by the human skin when exposed to sunlight.]
Aye, calcium. Can you remember how old were you when this child was born that, you know, you were at your grandmother’s? How old were you at the time?
R- Well, five or six.
Can you remember, did your mother breast feed that child?
R- Well she did.
Yes. How long for?
R- I don’t know. I couldn’t tell, but I mean, she used to breast feed. I used to see her doing it.
Yes. What if somebody couldn’t breast feed a child, how would they go on?
R- Pobs.
Aye
R- What they called pobs, it were milk with bread and sugar. That were what they got, pobs. There were none of this fancy rusks and what’s that? Allenberry’s food?
Yes, Ostermilk and stuff like that. Yes.
R- Yes, that sort of stuff. And that that makes fat, bouncing babies. Glaxo is it?
(250)
Aye that’s it. Glaxo, yes, that’s it.
R- But what happened in our case, we've only one child, a girl, and she were a big, strong baby, and it seemed she were always crying a lot. I don’t say regular but the day she were being christened, me mother and me sister came and the christening was here. And she were crying and so mother came in and we were new to the job. And me mother says “Why, she is hungry!” And my wife were breast feeding and me mother says “She is not getting enough. You’ve not enough milk for her.” So we had a bottle and a teat and me mother says “What have you in like, what, what have you in to make some milk with?” And we’d … the only thing we could find were Robinson’s Patent Barley. And me mother says “Well we’ll mix some of this with milk.” We mixed this bottle of milk and put the teat on and me mother says “Why there isn’t…” She was sucking hard but there were nothing coming through. Me mother says “There’s nothing coming through, there's not much coming through.”
(300)
(10 min)
And it shows how inexperienced people are. I were 35 then and “What can we do?” And mother says “Give me a darning needle.” And she warmed it over t’flame on the gas. Just pushed it through the end of the teat and burned the hole bigger. And she could get plenty then. She got a good feed and she slept all through the christening and not a peep. And we brought her up on Robinsons Patent Barley.
[This will sound very strange to people far in the future but it was a common problem which hasn’t attracted much attention. My wife and I had exactly the same experience with our first child and we asked my mother what we should do. She told us to boil fine sago until it was soft and put some in with the food. We had to cut a large hole in the teat to let the ‘bobbles’ through and it worked like a charm. All three daughters were reared the same way and years afterwards Nurse Hunt, who was the midwife in Barlick was horrified when we told her what we had done. All the kids grew up OK so we weren’t so far wrong. A good thing to have the benefit of an extended family.]
Aye. How, was your mother at all particular about things like disinfecting the house and catching flies?
R- Oh well, there were only flycatchers in those days. They are things they hung up, but we always used plenty of disinfectant and we always used carbolic soap, always.
What sort of disinfectant Horace?
R- Well, it were carbolic, we used to buy it in bottles.
Yes. And the flycatchers would be the sticky ones.
R- Sticky ones, yes.
Aye, and when they got full up, burn them, that’s it.
R- Burn them aye. They did get full, they did.
Yes. Would you say there were more flies about then?
R- There seemed to be.
Aye. Did your mother understand, do you think, that flies carried disease?
R - I think she did. She would do. Well if flies got on meat they blew them didn’t they, they used to call them blow flies. Keeping meat covered up and sometimes you’d get meat from the butchers and it had been blown, you see. But any meat she brought home she always used to wash in vinegar in Summer time if there were anything on it’d kill it.
(350)
Yes that’s it. Yes that was always vinegar and water weren’t it? Yes.
R- Yes. Oh vinegar and water because the meat were in the butcher’s window and there were bluebottles crawling over it.
Now then, work.. Now, your father’s work, talk about your father for a bit. What hours did he work?
R- Half past six till half past five at night, he didn't come home for his dinner, he’d either take it with him .. But I can remember taking his dinner to the mill, it wasn’t so far, fifty yards away. Take it into him and .. just leave it there and he’d eat it and bring the empty basin home at night. And they brew their own tea and they caught up with the work during the dinner hour after they’d had their dinner, they'd be sweeping and cleaning and splicing ropes, driving ropes. And then there’d be the driving bands, you know, to drive a …
Spindle
R- Drive the spindles. The spinner and his piecer had to do all those sort of jobs, all in their dinner hour.
What sort of a wage would he get?
R – I’ve no idea, I've no idea but the spinners were always supposed to be the aristocrats of the spinning industry.
(400)
Would his wage go up after, oh no, it wouldn’t do…
R - Nineteen sixteen.
I were going to say, because he died in 1916. Yes. Was he paid for holidays?
R- No. There’s no such thing as being paid for holidays and no guaranteed wage, you got paid what you earned, sweat of your brow.
What were they paid on, hours or how much…?
R- Weight. The weight they spun.
How much were doffed in t’week. That’s it, aye. Did he ever have any part time jobs?
R- He looked after the church.
But I mean, apart from jobs like that, you know, to earn money.
R- We had a newspaper round. I think we had a newspaper in Carleton and you had to collect them papers from Skipton Station, carry them home and take them round.
Is this a morning paper or evening paper?
R- Evening, there weren’t morning papers, very few in those days. And he used to have a, I think it was his piecer that helped to take the papers round.
Which paper was that Horace?
R- Well, there’d be all the evening papers you see. There’d be the Leeds Mercury and the Sporting Pink were one. But it’d be all evening papers, they’d come from Leeds and we’d quite a lot of Lancashire papers. A lot
(15 min)
of Lancashire people lived in Carleton, they’d want the, what was it? Not the Daily Telegraph, the Lancashire paper .. ?
Probably the Evening Telegraph. I’m not too sure at that time. I think it was probably the Evening Telegraph.
R- Evening Telegraph. Yes, and they were a halfpenny. And they took them out between them, delivered them, they didn’t stand hawking them, delivered the papers.
(450)
Oh so you’d always have a paper.
R- Yes. And if the trains were late, well the papers were late.
What time did they have to pick them up at the station?
R- As soon as ever he finished work.
And that’d be every night but Sunday.
R- Yes.
Did he ever have any accidents at work that you know of?
R- Never.
Never. Did you know anybody that worked at the mill that did have an accident?
R- No.
Right. And, we are talking about Slingsby’s now. Have you ever heard of anybody, even if you didn’t know of them, having an accident at. Slingsbys?
R- The taper at Carleton mill, when I were a lad, he’d part of his hand off. He’d had it fast in a tape. But whether it were done at Carleton or not I don’t know.
Was he ever out of work?
R- Never. Slingsby’s always kept going.
Aye. but if Slingsby’s had stopped, of course he would have been out of work. He’d have been stopped the same as the rest of them.
R- Aye, he would.
Yes. So he was never unemployed?
R- No.
And after he died did you ever get any help from the Board of Guardians?
R- No.
No. How about the Foresters? Would they do anything to help your bereavement?
R- Oh no, there’d be a death grant, that’s what there’d be but I don't know of anything else.
Did he belong to a Trade Union?
R- I don't think there’d he any at that time in Carleton, 1916.
(500)
Did you have any part time job before you started full time work?
R- No.
And of course, your job, you left school in 1918 .. what would it be? Now you were 12 years old. 1918 was it?
R- Yes, the war was just about finishing, drawing to a close then.
Yes, and you’d go half time.
R- My birthday is in April, that’d be before the war finished in November.
Aye, so you went half time to Slingsby's.
R- Yes.
And what was your first job Horace?
R- Doffing.
Now, explain what doffing is.
R- Ring spinning, there’s a difference between ring spinning and mule spinning. With mule spinning, the spinner doffs, they’re men, the spinner doffed his cops. But in ring spinning they’re stationary and the yarn ran on to a wooden bobbin about eight inches tall. And when they were full we, the doffers, used to have to doff the full ones and put the empty ones on. It’d take a bit of explaining, the process. There’s a carriage with the rings on
(20 min)
and what they called a traveller. And the yarn came down and hooked under this traveller and as the spindle were going round it dragged the yarn through this carrier and it were, the traveller were going up and down all the time ..
That’s it, they spread it on the bobbin.
R- Yes, and every time it came to the top it went up a little bit higher till it got to the top of the bobbin. When it were at the top you had to doff them. And the head doffer, he knocked it out of gear and twined the wheel at the end of the frame and the carriage went to the bottom again. And then there’d be three doffers to each side, they were double sided frames were a ring frame. There’d be three doffers to each side, perhaps two. And your can, your doffing can, was in two halves. One half had the empties in and the other half were for your full ones. And you got quite skilled at it. You walked on, you put your doffing can on a slide, walked on with it with your knees against it and you were picking a handful of empties out of here and you pull the full ones off and pop empty ones on. And pushing the empty ones on, it caught the end of the thread and held it there.
Yes, these would be ring tubes?
R- Ring tubes they were, wood. And when you got to the end and everybody’s
Finished, the head doffer used to put it in gear again and set the frame on and you had to take all the ends up that were down. And that were it, and then you moved on to the next frame. Faster you got your work done the more playing time you had. And if you got straight you went out playing outside in the mill yard, football, anything.
And what hours were you working then?
R- Half past six till half past .. well, it were half past six while half past eight, half an hour for your breakfast, and nine till half past twelve. Went home, had me dinner, went to school at half past one till four o'clock.
Yes but then next week you would be going to school in the morning.
R- Morning, and worked at the afternoon.
Which would you rather do, work in the morning and school in the afternoon or school in the morning and work in the afternoon?
R- Not go at all. It broke my heart when I thought I had to go into a mill. I remember when they said I had to go to work at Monday, eh I did cry.
Or when you first went?
R- Well you get used to it, I knew the work were to do, we had to live.
Yes. So you went into the mill when you were 12 and you’re doing half time. What pay did you get?
(600)
R- I think it were about 12/- a week. Wages were getting a bit better then.
Aye, that weren’t bad really were it.
R- No. And as time went on .. I know when the war finished and there were that bit of a boom… I were drawing more money then than I did when I got married.
Yes, and did you think it was a good wage that?
R- You’d no idea. You tipped up what you got and that were it. And if there were anybody off, you’d so many spindles to do, if there were anybody off you did their work as well and you got their wage to share out. You see, the head doffer got the wages and you shared it out at wages day.
Did you ever know of anybody going to work earlier than legal age?
R- No, they daren’t allow it, not in a mill.
When you went half time, did you have a medical before you went?
R- Supposed to do, they felt at you. If you were warm you were fit.
Who gave you the inspection?
R- Doctor was supposed to come. A doctor come and he were just looking at you and if you looked all right, well, you were all right. There were no medical at all. I do remember this, and I thought well, if you’re warm you are fit. Doctor Jago [Earby doctor]used to do that, he’d put his hand on you, “Oh, nice and warm” and that were that, you were living.
How were you treated by your employers?
R- Well it depended on what sort of foreman you had. But as long as you did your work that were it. And there was an incentive to work hard, you could go and play out. But sometimes you’d decide that you wanted a rise, or if you were fed up, hot days, and everybody just went up the Ghyll and left them to it. Aye, I know we used to do that, used to clear off, they were no good without doffers. And you got your shilling a week or whatever you wanted for a rise.
Is that right?
R- Yes we did, we just used to clear off. We were young but we were young beggars I know. But they couldn’t do anything about it.
How long were you a doffer?
R- It worked this way, if there were doffers available you were moved up on to another job. You could go into the card room or into weaving or mule spinning, you’d the choice if there were vacancies.
Yes, so tell me what happened to you.
R- Well I went into the warehouse.
And how long were you doffing before you went into the warehouse?
R- Fourteen perhaps.
Aye. Two year happen.
R- Yes.
So you’d do a year on full time, doffing, and then you got the chance to go into the warehouse..
R- You could move on if there were anyone available to take your place. If there were more coming along you get moved on quicker. If you didn’t, you stayed where you were until there were someone available.
And what was your job in the warehouse?
R- Bundling. Weavers used to come to the weft door, you used to give them the weft, you took the cards round to the weavers when the office chap marked their cards.
Yes, that’s it, putting cuts down.
R- Yes.
How did you like working in the warehouse?
R- It were all right. It were work, I mean when you’re young, and it wasn’t hard, there were no slave driving.
Was there any apprenticeship or any kind of training?
R- No.
You just learned the job?
R- That were it. You’d do this and you'd do that and you, you wrap them up like this and tie a piece. They were all short length pieces, they were thirty seven and a half yards long, they were all for export. And they say it were the length they took for a turban or for the woman to wrap round them.
Aye, a sari.
R- Yes. Well, and there were various types and you’d put different headings in, fancy headings that’d cost more than what the cloth did. Gold headings, you’d little bobbins to put in the shuttles, gold thread on or gold and red and blue and that must have been the status symbol for whoever got them out in India. All sorts of fancy headings, you’d a book with all the headings in, different sorts had to have these different headings in.
How often were the headings put in, just at the end of a piece or all the way through?
R- No, you know when you came to the piece you’d to put the heading in, and then you screwed up and then another heading. Each end of the piece.
Yes. So it wasn’t like a pattern, it wore just at the end of each piece.
R- End of each piece.
Did you belong to a trade union?
(30 min)
R- No, there wasn’t any.
No. We’re still talking about Slingsby’s?
R- Yes.
And what did your brothers and sisters do?
R- Me oldest brother, he went weaving, but he didn't go to Carleton, I had an uncle who were weaving in Broughton Road Shed, down Broughton Road, and this uncle of mine took him to learn weaving and he were weaving. When me father died you see, he were weaving in Skipton. Because in summer time when I went home from school for me dinner I’d get my dinner, and me mother used to put his dinner up in a basket, in a basin and then in a basket, and I had to go across the fields and I used to meet him. He set off from Skipton, Broughton Road, and walked till he met me, it were usually about half way. And then he’d sit and have his dinner, and I waited until he’d finished
(750)
and then brought the basin back with the basket and went off to school. That were in Summer weather not in winter time because you couldn't get across the fields because they were usually flooded.
Aye, of course they were, aye.
R- They were flooded were the fields.
Yes, because it's low lying there isn’t it.
R - It is.
And how about your sister?
R- Me sister went learning to weave at Skipton when she started working. I had a brother who went in a grocer shop, Carr’s grocers. He went farming did me brother, I had a uncle and he said did he want to come farming he’d learn him farming. And then as time went on, well, perhaps he’d been there a year and George Carr came. George Carr were a Carleton chap and he came and asked me mother if he’d like to go into a shop, there were a shop just where we lived, Carr’s shop and so he went there and stopped there for years in this grocer’s shop.
And that was in Carleton?
R- In Carleton.
Who did you think were better off, your brother working in the grocer shop or you working in the mill?
R- Well, I had more money but his were [always there] Then, when he went there were a lot of bad trade. A man in a grocer’s shop always had a, a boy in a grocer shop always had a regular wage.
Aye. And what difference do you think there was then between what you describe as a labourer, and a tradesman and a craftsman, you know?
R- Well, one way 2d an hour we’ll say. Twopence or threepence an hour. Because they talk about a labourer getting ten pence an hour and a craftsman being on a shilling, that was the difference between serving an apprenticeship till you were 21 or going as a labourer.
Was there any difference in status or the way they dressed or anything like that you know ? Was there any difference apart from the 2d an hour?
R- No, you weren’t looked upon any different to anybody else.
Aye, interesting that. And obviously your father was mule spinning in the first world. You didn’t start working till after the first world war.
(800)
R - Nineteen eighteen.
Yes. And nobody out of your family had served in the army or the navy?
R - No.
No.
R- Yes, my youngest brother, air force.
Ah yes, this is…
R- In the second world war. Yes.
Second world war, yes.
R- But me oldest brother, he wasn't old enough when the war finished you see. Not really, he hadn’t to go anyway.
And did anyone in the family work on munitions during the first world war?
R- No, there were no munitions round us unless, some engineering places and that was, nearest was Keighley, for engineering. They’d be working on munitions.
Yes. We’ve already talked about milliners and things like that, but, speaking generally now Horace, what jobs were there for girls and women when you were young. And what jobs did you think of as women’s work as opposed to men’s work?
(35 min)
R- Well, there were men weaving and there were women weavers. And the men had this ambition to become tacklers and that were where the men got to. And in the card room there were both men and women’s jobs. And in the spinning mill there were all women's jobs and in the winding room as well.
Now wait a minute, spinning?
R- Ring spinning.
Ring spinning?
R- They were all women's jobs except for the doffers and [the overlookers] who used to attend to the machinery, change the wheels for different counts. You see they’d to change the wheels.
Yes. How about mule spinning, that’d all be men wouldn’t it?
R - All men.
Yes. Did you ever know a woman mule spinner?
R – Never. They were all men. And in the card room it were mixed. Strippers and grinders were men, and labourers would be men but mainly women in a card room.
How about winders?
R- Winders were all women and beamers were all women. Some of the women ran two beaming frames.
Aye. They’d be low speed frames wouldn't they, old frames. They weren’t high speed.
R- Yes they were. Not the high speed.
Yes. Now, apart from the mill, apart from jobs in the mill, what would you think of as women's work?
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R - Well, one or two worked in shops at Skipton, there were milliners and ordinary shops. There were one or two that worked at George Hurst’s. That were when there were dressmakers at George Hurst’s, all hand made stuff. There were one woman called Bargh and one called Dinsdale who used to walk it to Skipton every day and walk back at night. There were no buses when I were younger.
How about things like going into service or nursing or teaching?
R- Two girls that won scholarships went teaching, one called Whitehead, her father were the secretary of the Foresters but he were a weaver. Stella Whitehead went teaching and there were another girl, Dorothy Garnett, her father were a tackler and a barber at night. His daughter went teaching and she got a position at Harewood House. That were around Princess Mary, [she were ] a Lascelles you know. They thought it was something wonderful to be over there and working where Lord Lascelles lived.
And did you make any differentiation between men’s work and women’s work? What I’m trying to get at Horace is, obviously I don’t want to push you too much. You know, what was women’s work? What was regarded as … I mean, housework would he regarded fairly generally then and now as woman’s work. But also, things like being a milliner would not be regarded as a man’s job. Could you think of anything else that was, that was …
R- In the shops there were all men until the war come in.
Which war, the first world war? Yes.
R- First world war, they were all men.
Would you say that the first world war made a big difference to women’s position in society?
R- I don’t think it made any. Some women didn’t work, they’d families and they stayed at home and struggled on. And other women had families and took the children out to he minded and worked and did their housework at night. I think I told you about a cousin of mine, she worked all the week and when she’d paid [her dues] she had a shilling left.
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(40 min)
Yes, finished up with a shilling a week. Nineteen twenty, there was a fair boom in cotton up to about 1920 and then it cracked.
R- Cracked.
How did it affect Slingsby’s?
R- Well, they struggled on for a long time working a week and playing a week, and working a month and playing a week. When you were playing you always used to go up to the office, they put a notice up at Friday afternoon if you had to work the following week and if you hadn’t to you walked on to Skipton and signed on. When they started at first you’d to go every day, wet or fine, and it used to he a proper shambles, all crowded there, didn’t know where you were going, you just struggled and pushed your way in. And “Nothing for you this week, it hasn’t come through.” And you’d go away and go the next day. And then things got a bit more organised, or disorganised. They gave you a card with a time on, a minute to ten we’ll say. And you’d go there and there’d be a long queue, and you took your place in the queue studying the clock on the wall and you got to the desk and she, there were women behind the counter as well as men .. look at your card, look at the clock, you’re two minutes too soon, go to the back of the queue. And the whole process again. You'd walk from Carleton to Skipton, pouring rain, water running out of your breeches behind I should say and that were the way you were tret [treated]. And I saw a man one day, they eventually got grilles to protect the people behind the counter, and there were a
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big fellow in front of me and he were arguing with a woman and she’d fetched the manager and I don't know what happened, he just leaned through and took him by the throat, and pulled him through this hole in the grill. He just, if they hadn’t pulled him off he’d have strangled him. You were just tret like dogs. And Gargrave, five mile away, they were expected to go every day.
How long did that go on for?
R- Oh, long enough. 1921. And you run out of money, you’d happen draw I don’t know how many weeks you drew. I think I’d be drawing happen six shilling a week, not married you see and your money’s run out, you’ll have to wait.
What did they mean by that? That your money had run out?
R- Well you were only allowed so many weeks on the dole. Your money ran out.
So if you had no money and your money’s run out what did you do then? Starve?
R- Yes. They thought that doing that’d push you into getting work. But how could you get work when nine out of ten were unemployed? I were living at home, it didn’t worry me but chaps who were smoking would give anything to have a draw at a cigarette. And people that came out of work, chaps who were near forty then, there wasn’t a chance of ever getting work again. And Slingsby’s dribbled on until 1926 off an on and doing a bit till 1926 and then they're finished, the bank took over. And that finished Carleton Mill. And lots of people that, men that were turned forty or fifty, well that were it, they never got any more work. Some people moved away but other people, all the work they got happen was delivering letters at Christmas. Stuff like that. Because quite a lot got on the railway at that time. My brother that were weaving at Skipton, he’d been weaving at Skipton and then he started courting a servant and she were the servant of the mill manager, and he found him a job firebeating, boiler tenting, so he were working there.
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(45 min)
Then when they closed down he got on to the railway, quite a lot round about my age got on to the railway as platelayers you see, just labouring jobs. I remember he were sent all over the place, and that’s about thirty seven shilling a week, pay the lodgings, just come home at week ends.
And you worked at Slingsby’s until they finished did you?
R- Yes.
Well I think that’s a good time to stop this tape Horace.
R- And in between times, when the short time was in summer time, you could get a bit of haymaking.
Aye.
R- Sixpence ha’penny an hour.
Sixpence ha’penny an hour. How did that compare with the mill wage at that time.
R- Well, it’d be a shilling..
So it would be badly paid compared with mill job.
R- Oh, you couldn't get anything out of farmers.
Yes. And of course they knew that you were hard up for a job anyway.
R- Yes. And so I worked for a man, sixpence ha’penny an hour. We’d a job to get paid, a mate of mine and me, We’d go round to the farmhouse, “Oh, it’s broken weather. We won’t want any.” But in a fair bit of good weather you could start and, sixpence ha’penny an hour. And I went through that chap’s yard twelve months since. He were dead were that farmer, and his lad had taken the farm on. And there were two motor cars stood in the yard and I knew one were the farmer’s, I say “Who’s is t’other car?” He says “Oh, it’s the lad’s.”
SCG/08 March 2003
6,250 words
LANCASHIRE TEXTILE PROJECT
TAPE 79/AD/09
THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 16TH OF JULY 1979 AT 16 COWGILL STREET, EARBY. THE INFORMANT IS HORACE THORNTON, TAPER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
Last time Horace, we were talking about how you went on in the depression in the twenties. Well, you were talking about labour exchanges and what it was like going up to Skipton to draw the dole. Now I think we’ll go on with that for a bit. What are your general impressions now of conditions during… Well, let’s get it straight first. When did the depression start?
R- 1920 things started worsening. Nineteen twenty into nineteen twenty one.
Would that be basically the textile industries or was it all round?
R- Textile industries mainly. There were a boom and then the countries abroad got on to their feet and they didn't want our stuff then. And we’d been sending machinery abroad, looms you see, for years and years and years and they began to catch up with us, they didn't want our stuff.
Now I realise at the time you'd be, obviously you were a young man but you must have heard people talking, you know, during your younger days.
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Did anybody at all see the depression coming before it did?
R- People used to say, weavers let’s say that had been used to about a pound a week, they were drawing three pound a week and they used to say “It can’t last, it never has done, big wages and the price of food.” And they started wanting to reduce your wages and they wouldn’t accept it and they came out on strike perhaps a week and then word would go round; “They’ve accepted half a crown in the pound reduction. So you go back to your work on Monday.” And we had to do. And it kept coming round like that, you had a few weeks unemployed and then they’d come with another demand for a reduction, same old thing again.
So how many times, were you brought out on strike at that time?
R- Oh yes, you were brought out, the weavers came out, the spinners came out you see, there were nothing for us to do and there were no union pay, you see the lads weren't in the union.
Yes, and as you say, and of course you weren’t in the union anyway.
R- No, but the weaving side were the worst hit, the spinning went
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on a lot longer full time than what the weaving did because it were all sent out to India, cheap cotton you see. Just plain cotton and they couldn’t make their own you know, the simplest thing to make that there was, just ordinary white cotton, heavy sized.
So for a time then you were spinning at Slingsby’s? Of course, you were still a doffer then at Slingsby’s. Were they exporting weft?
R- No, it were going to Barnoldswick, the weft, the warps, the beams, going to Barnoldswick and up and down in Lancashire. But a friend of mine that was a mill manager out in India, he said “If they’d only stop Japanese goods going into India, Lancashire would be on full time and overtime.” He said that was the trouble in India, he said the Indians couldn’t compete with the stuff Japan were sending in. It's just the same now, we can’t compete with Japanese stuff.
Yes, and of course there’s the old thing in there, they used to say that Lancashire used to weave for this country before breakfast and then the rest of the day they were weaving for export.
R- Yes.
Aye, and so when the export trade was hit, that was that.
R- Everything was hit.
That was that …
R- Killed Lancashire.
Yes. I have heard the opinion expressed that one of the main reasons for the crack, for the boom up to 1920 and the crack afterwards, was that during the 1914-18 war, due to war production and due to the shortage of labour, with so many people being away at the war, what you might call ‘shelf stocks’, you know, warehouse stocks and things like that…
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R - Had all been used up. Yes.
And the 1918 to 1920 boom was really a re-stocking operation and once that had been done the demand went off again.
R- Yes. The older people said they could see it coming before the war. Short… bad times you see, bad trade. Because Japan were getting our markets.
Yes. Can you ever remember this sort of thing being the subject of comment? Or being used politically you know, say in elections and things like that?
R- Well it were mentioned about Japanese competition.
But I find very little evidence that… It seems to have caught everybody by surprise. When I say everybody, it seems to have caught most of the manufacturers by surprise. One wonders whether they were so used to this sort of thing that they assumed that when it did come it wouldn’t be hurting them anyway and it’d only be a temporary thing.
R- Yes. They’d had it so good you see that they’d just gone on year after year .. booms and bits of slumps and booms and bits of slumps. But after 1920 it were slumps and then a bigger slump next time, and then there’d just be a [recovery] trade’d mend a bit and then went further down. And then one mill after another went bankrupt you see, that were how it came to be.
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there hadn’t been bankruptcies before but round here, Colne and Nelson and Burnley, they started pulling the mills down, and that wasn’t a good sign when they were just stood empty and then they pulled them down. No hope of them ever being weaving sheds again.
When the had times did hit, you know, after 1920 say in Carleton, how bad was it? When I say how bad was it, I don’t mean how bad was the unemployment, I mean the poverty and suffering caused by unemployment. How bad was it?
R- Well, all the people that worked at Slingsby’s, they were out of work. And then Skipton were doing better, they were all weaving fancy stuff at Skipton. Well, weavers from Carleton walked across into Skipton and got work there. They had it all to learn but Skipton went on you see. But it were the foreign goods that were done for. You see the people that were weaving fancy stuff, they kept on, and on, and on until well after, well after the second world war. And then Courtaulds took over nearly all of them and they haven’t done so well have they?
No, one would hardly say so. Now of course one of the things that happened about this time was we went back on the gold standard didn’t we.
R- Yes.
Can you remember that?
R- Oh yes. But I didn’t understand it then, being on the gold standard. We never saw any gold. Aye, you couldn’t understand what they meant.
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Yes. Can you remember there being comment about that though?
R – No. We were only lads I mean …
Yes. Now of course that led up to the series of strikes that culminated in the General Strike of 1926.
R- Yes, 1926.
Now, what can you remember about that Horace?
R- Well, we were not so far away from Skipton you see, just a mile and a quarter away. And the dead silence…
From Carleton?
R- At Carleton from Skipton.
Yes, from Skipton.
R- Dead silence, no railway engines, that was what struck you, everything was so quiet, nothing moving.
No shunting.
[‘No shunting’ might puzzle anyone who hasn’t lived near a centre of steam transport. One of the most characteristic sounds of the railway was the sound of the couplings between the wagons snapping open when a train of wagons was pulled to move it, or the buffers slamming together if it was pushed. In the goods yard of a centre like Skipton trains were being marshalled for the following day’s movements and during the night the sound of the couplings jangling was a constant backdrop of noise.]
R- No, no shunting, no trucks going through. The express train used to come through Skipton and then when they were coming up what we called
(10 min)
the Lancashire line, a steep gradient, they were puffing away but {it] just seemed to be dead quiet, nothing going on at all. There weren’t many lorries about in those days, not same as it is now. But the silence somehow…. They only lasted a few days. Only a week or two.
And did the general strike have any effect in Carleton? You know, was there any difficulties say with food supplies or fuel supplies?
R- No, none whatever, none at all.
It didn’t go on long enough.
R- Oh no it didn’t. If the railways had been out on strike for a month or two, well it would, but there were no effect at all, the coal strike lasted a lot longer, the miners stopped out but in those days they were delivering coal at Carleton from Burnley at tenpence ha’penny a hundredweight delivered into your coalhouse. I know we’d a big coalhouse, we used to stock up in summer, and it didn’t matter whether there were strikes or snowbound or what, we’d always plenty of coal. But tenpence ha’penny…
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Aye, it makes you wonder doesn’t it?
R- Yes.
How did your spare time activities change after you started work?
R- Well, when I were doffing and I were full time, the things I can remember, I used to go home an get me tea and fall asleep in the chair. Me mother’d wake me up to have me supper and then I’d go to bed. And then I were up at half past five and you were at it for ten hours you know, six o’clock at the morning and a couple of breaks, and half past five at night. And it were warm and you were at it nearly all the time. . And that’s where your spare time went, sleeping.
Aye. Did you go to any dances?
R- I learned to dance when I were about seventeen, perhaps eighteen, and I went to quite a lot. There was always dances in Carleton and in Skipton. When I got older I went to dances at Skipton, but every week in Carleton in winter to a dance.
Where at?
R- Well, they had them in the school and they had them in the co-op rooms. The church ran dances, Conservative Ball as they called them and Liberal Ball and t'Co-op Ball you see. There used to be a gala, a procession round Carleton, a tea party, and sports, and then dance at night.
Would you say there was more of that went on then than now?
R- Oh yes. I wonder many a time what the young folk do. There’s very few pictures, there's no dancing. There used to be choral societies and various things going on, there were light operas, all that sort of thing. Girls Friendly Societies used to
have them and rope young fellows in for the male parts. Oh, there were plenty going on, whist drives, always something going on in a village. But there's nothing now.
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Aye, yes. You are right. How about, you went to the cinema didn’t you. You went to the cinema in Skipton.
R- Yes we did, and it were a penny. Walk there, and a pennorth of tripe bits or a pennorth of chips and walk back.
How about music halls and theatres?
R- No.
No. And you kept on going to church?
R- Yes.
Did you take any interest in politics? As you were getting older?
R- No.
Why didn’t you?
R- Well, I didn’t go to a club, I didn’t go to the Conservative Club and it were never discussed at our house.
Aye that’s it. I remember you telling me. And your father was a Conservative?
R- Yes.
Now I seem to remember you telling me that at one time your ideas changed.
R- Yes.
About what time of life was that Horace?
R- Well eventually Slingsby’s closed down.
When did Slingsby’s close down, roughly?
R- Now then, I’ll tell you. The weaving shed closed about 1922. I were 21 and I messed about, worked in the tape room, in the warehouse and everywhere. They’d find the lads a job up and down, beam flanging and such as that. They had a donkey at Carleton, it were rather a good big donkey and they had it for pulling the beams and weft from one mill to another. And they came across from over the main road and up a fairly steep hill and this donkey used to pull the trucks of weft up there and then you took the back beams to the tape room and all that sort of thing. It were worth it’s weight in gold were that donkey. And you just hooked it on, they had one or two different sorts of trucks, some for carrying the weft and a different shape for the back beams and the front beams. You had to be very quick, it had just a chain behind it with a hook on and as soon as ever you dropped the hook on the truck the donkey went. If you missed with the hook the donkey went just the same dragging you after it. I wonder what happened to that donkey, I left you know. I know it ran out in a field, I looked after it for years. I suppose it’d die eventually but it were 26 then and it were a good worker.
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When did you leave Slingsby’s?
R - Nineteen twenty two.
Yes. When the weaving stopped?
R- Yes. I’d been out of work about a week or a fortnight and I had an uncle working in Broughton Road, weaving. And he says they’re wanting someone in the warehouse at Rycroft’s [Rycroft and Hartley Limited. Broughton Road Shed.] and go and see them. And so I went in and I got working there. Of course you had to do something and I were 21 then, and I were working there until the war, well, till after the war. When the war come on it were a reserved occupation, and you couldn’t move, you couldn’t go anywhere.
And what were you doing at Rycroft’s?
R - In the warehouse, clothlooking.
All the time?
R - Yes. Clothlooking, but it wasn’t just running it over a machine. Every inch had to be examined. And each man had forty looms. A tackler had forty looms, the piece looker had forty looms, and you were responsible for all that cloth. And there were 16 warehouse men, it were a right long warehouse. And on that long table right from one end to the other. And you pulled
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every inch over the table, threw it into a rack at the back and pulled it over. And it had to be perfect, they guaranteed their cloth these Rycrofts and every end had to be sewn in. Striped poplin, every end that were down. And there’d be more than 20 menders.
When you say ‘had to be sewn in’ if there were an end down for say about six inch down the cloth, them ends were threaded in with a needle?
R- With a needle. That was in coloured. You know how they used to be, pinstripes. and every end, even if it were a coloured end, it had to be sewn in.
(20 min)
If it were a shirt you know, and there were a pinstripe and it was out, but they had to be sewn in, coloured ends. They said “These shirts will be a guinea” Well, a guinea seemed a fabulous amount when we could get a shirt for half a crown or less.
Aye, I mean it were like a week’s wage, the equivalent of a £60 shirt now weren’t it.
R- Yes it was. But they wove everything at Rycroft’s. Now when the war came it were a reserved occupation and they’d to do government cloth, parachute cloth and balloon cloth and airforce shirtings. Bunting, that were that woollen stuff, you know, those flags that you see. All that bunting stuff, they’re weaving that. That parachute cloth had to be, were the most particular about, and the balloon cloth as well, for barrage balloons. But the parachute cloth were the most particular, there had to he nothing let go. The inspectors, after you’d inspected them you had an Inspection stamp, you stamped it on, and the piece number, and then government inspectors came
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round and they’d just pick a piece up haphazard and examine every inch of it. And they’d see if you’d let anything slip. You know, it were men’s lives if there were a fault in the parachute cloth.
And these changing ideas about politics, when did this take place?
R- After I went to Rycrofts. There were fellows there that had been in the first war you see. They hadn’t been out of the army long, 1922. Some of them had only been out three years, 1919, and they were full of [experience]. It changed my ideas about Conservatives and Labour and I could see where things had gone wrong.
And where do you think things had gone wrong?
R- Well, from my point of view, brought up in a Conservative family, you thought they were [infallible], everything that they did were right. And then you realised that what they did were mainly all wrong. It were right from their point of view. All this stuff about when you met the boss of the mill in the street you’d always to salute him and all that sort of baloney. And everything that they did were right.
Did people do things like that? I mean, say 1918, if you’d met Mr Slingsby as you wore walking up the street…
R - Not after you left the school but when you were at school was as much as your life [was worth if you didn’t] salute the schoolmaster and his wife and the parson you see.
Yes. How about after you started at Rycroft’s, would you have done the same then?
R- Would I what! I’d spit in their eye.
Is that right? Now it’s all right but I'm pushing you a bit on this Horace, but I mean…
R- No no, it’s all right.
It’s obvious that there had been a fairly radical change in your opinions. Did anything, did anything in particular contribute towards it?
R - Well you read more and you took more notice of what were going on
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as you got older. As a lad you didn’t care two hoots as long as the sun came up in the morning and when you went home there were a meal ready for you.
What did you read?
R - Well we got the Daily Herald, and I don't think we’d have taken that but they started coming round and if you’d take it for so many weeks you got a dictionary or something like that.
Yes, you mentioned that. Now .. I thought to meself, really, that even a Conservative household, it showed that even a Conservative household could be swayed by good marketing. Yes. And what else beside the papers, did you read anything else?
R - And moving away from the village. I've a brother and sister now that have never moved away, they still live in Carleton, they are still Conservative.
Aye, that’s a good point Horace, that's a good point. Did you ever read anything like, you know, some of the classic Socialist primers you know like, I don't know, Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, something like that.
(25 min)
R - Well I’ve read it since. But my wife’s family are right Labour people. My father in law was on Colne Council for years and until they closed the shed down at Colne and they moved them to Burnley. All the [bus] drivers had to go to Burnley. And they finished with the Council then but he’d been next on for mayor if that change hadn’t taken place. And a big honour to be the Mayor of Colne.
Yes, of course it is, to be mayor of your own town. Yes. And so there was nothing really radical happened to you to change your view, it was just that you began to take more notice and made up your own mind.
R- Yes of course I did.
Would you say that the way you were treated when you were unemployed influenced you at all?
R- When I was unemployed me brother worked at Carleton and he was unemployed at the same time just for a few weeks not [permanent] he were on short time. Well, there was only me eldest brother and me working. Well we were both signing on. Well, we both got ..for lads I don’t know what it’d
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be, happen 8/- a week. And me mother put a claim in for more money for herself, because there were three not working, still at school, and me brother got a form, he’d to go down to Keighley, they’ve a tribunal to try your case. And he were only a lad at fifteen or sixteen, I don’t know, what, happen seventeen or eighteen, only a boy. And they asked him all sorts of questions about it. You see, “She stayed on and paid for thee.” All sorts of things and… He’d be eighteen and “Are you courting?” No he weren’t. “Well, do you think [you might be] courting?” No. “Well you're old enough to get married, aren’t you?” He said “Oh yes if I were.” So well, they couldn’t allow her any more money, because if they did and he got married it’d be stopped and she’d be back in the same position. That were the excuse they made, wouldn't allow any more money. And she wasn’t drawing off the town or anything, but just expected a bit more for the three that were not working. And all such things as that. And you began to wonder when you were out of work, the bosses could be buying new cars you see? Now Rycrofts, when I were working at Rycrofts, they weren't on full time always. The way the weavers weren’t playing but they dropped the [number of] looms down, you see. Happen on three looms instead of four. Well every man that was on forty looms it’d average out at thirty or thirty five. And they used to count the number of looms that were stopped at Saturday morning and if they added up to forty looms stopped in 972 looms, one man had to have a week off. If there were 80 looms without warps, two men had to be off. But they weren’t fair because a weaver could have a warp out at Saturday morning and the tackler wouldn’t bother to put it in, the loom were to sweep he'd leave it while
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Monday. But all these looms that had warps out were counted an stopped even if they’d have warps in at Monday. But there were 40 looms empty and so one man had to play off. And the tapers, I used to go in the tape room quite a 1ot and the taper, when it got to Friday night, he’d happen have a couple of hundred yards to run, or Saturday dinner time, we worked until Saturday dinner time then. And he’d to come in at Monday morning and run that set out
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for half past ten or eleven o'clock. When he got his set out “Go home now.” He’d to finish there and then. And he were coming from Nelson, he’d to come to Skipton and run his set out, then finish. It might have been for two or three weeks, I don’t really know. Or a week out, but that were the way they did and I know Rycrofts, the worse period they ever had, the most looms were stopped any time I can remember was this particular year and there were three new motorcars came on to the firm, there were two brothers and the father, all partners in the firm. They each had a new motorcar and that’s what makes people bitter.
Yes. I can understand that Horace. Did you take part in any sport? Were you interested in any sport? Did you follow any particular sport?
R - I played football.
Yes? You played? Who with?
R- Yes. Village team, that were all. And I remember quite clearly I were eighteen and I got a right hammering, punching. And I thought “Now then. Am I going to make my living at this or am I not.” I thought, “Well, you’ll never make a living at it so it’s time you finished!” Way we were at home, I couldn’t afford to be lame. So I packed it in. Quite content to watch.
Yes. How good were you?
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R- Not so good. No, I know that, that’s why I thought “Well, you’ll never make your living at this. Pack it up.” Because there were older people getting their kneecap knocked off and their legs broken at the football matches and I thought “No.”
Round about this time, sometime about then you must have met your wife. When did you meet her?
R- I were twenty five. So that’s about 1925.
Now you were born in 1906 and ...
R- It were 1925. No, later than that, I’m getting it wrong, I were 25.
Yes, so that’d be 1931.
R- Nineteen thirty one. I were twenty five.
You’d be working at Rycrofts then.
R - Yes, I wore working at Rycrofts and me brother were the verger at the church, and he were working at Rycrofts then, quite a lot at Rycrofts and he left Rycrofts and got on the railway, a more regular job and more money guaranteed for work on the railway. And then he got married, so he were working seven days a week. So the verger’s job, he had to pack it up and did do but me mother kept the church cleaning on. It were money for me mother you see to earn and keep you going. And I took the verger job on. You had to attend funerals and you attended the church service, and you attended christenings and weddings. You get, you got paid for it all and one day there were a christening at Carleton and, you didn’t know who it were, you never looked,
(35 min)
just put the water, warm water, in the font and put the prayer books out or cards with all the service on for the people that were attending the christening, god parents. And this day I went to one and my wife were there, come from Colne to a friend of hers that were farming at Carleton. They’d had a child and she came as godparent I suppose and that were how I met her. I knew the other people that were there from Carleton and I got to the christening tea and that were how we met.
(750)
Yes. Of course there would be certain difficulties there, you were living in Carleton and she was living in Colne I presume.
R- Yes. And I had the church work, I couldn’t go on Sunday but she always came to Carleton. Well, invariably, came to Carleton.
Oh well then she must have been taken on with you and all, at the same time.
R- Well yes. That were how it were.
Aye. Good. And how long were you courting before you got married?
R- Five years.
Now then. Was that because, obviously I mean no offence here, this is just a way of getting at it. How was that? Because you couldn’t make your mind up or because you were saving up or what was the reason for that five years?
R- Well, until they were all working at home I would never have thought of getting married. I wouldn’t have thought of starting courting. And then, you couldn’t get married haphazard in those days. Well I wouldn’t, you’ve got to get some money behind you. And then I thought about me mother you see. There were three [at home and] though they were getting [older], there were me brother, he were 27, sister were 24 or 5, and a brother 21, me youngest brother 21 or thereabouts. And I wouldn't have got married till they were all grown up, not for nothing. And so we just had to go on and wages weren’t big, you had to try and save what you could do and live and have holidays. But with both of us saving we furnished this house, we rented this house.
We’ll get on to the house in a minute Horace. Where did you get married? What was the date you got married?
Nineteen thirty six. Thereabouts, September.
Yes, that’s it. September 1936. Now what was your wife’s job then?
R- She worked at the Colne Co-op. She managed the branch shoe shop at Colne. Now there were a lady in the shoe shop down here, she were leaving to have a baby, gave up.
That’s the Co-op shoe shop, yes.
R- Yes, Co-op shoe shop here, [Earby] Gave up here and my wife applied for it and she got this shoe shop, manageress.
(800)
Was that in 1936 as well?
R- Yes, 1936 and that were why it were possible for us to get married. There were no houses to be got in Skipton. I had my name down for a council house but it were hopeless. But in Earby you’d have a pick of a hundred houses, things were that bad. All these streets here were all empty, and up there all empty. Barnoldswick were the same weren’t it.
Yes.
R- And with my wife working here she knew all the houses and one were coming empty here and it were a fair good house so she asked for it and got it. And we got married. It were September holidays 1936. You couldn’t afford to have much time off. Of course, Colne holidays and Skipton came together.
Aye. Now by the time you got married, obviously you’d been courting for five years and you’d been saving up and you are moving into a rented house. How did you go on about furnishing it then, were you able to make a fair job of furnishing when you came in?
(40 min)
R- Every room furnished.
And this is when you went to Ledgard and Wynn’s. That’s it, you told me about that didn’t you. And you started off with…
R- Everything. Not this, everything.
That’s not this three piece settee that we are .. sorry
R- No. We had one, a good one but me mother, during the war… and then me mother, I’m digressing a bit, me mother…
You’re right.
R- Me mother had a three piece and it were worn out, and there were none to buy. This is during the war, and they lived in the room which it were in. It were a house and a kitchen and they lived in the front room and it were jiggered. And so I said to her “We’ll let you have ours. We seldom go into the front room.” [So we let me mother have it] and we’d get another one. And we were without in this room. I used it as a work shop, kept my bicycle in here and all that sort of thing. And when the war come on you know, travelling by bus were very difficult. There were no petrol for motor cars and persons that had motor cars. Well the bus started up Skipton, and I were working down Broughton Road and it were just straight past, you couldn’t get on. [Because it was full] So I thought the only thing to do is to get a bicycle. And I cycled for years to Skipton and back. I don’t know how I did sometimes, the roads
were that slippy.
(850)
Yes. So, you were working down here in, you were living, you and your wife were living in Earby, she was managing the Co-op shoe shop and you were still working at Rycrofts and you were in the warehouse then, piece-looking.
R- Then.
Yes. Now how long did your wife carry on working after you’d got married?
R- Katherine were born in 1945.
That’s your daughter.
R- Yes. That were nine years.
Aye, nine years
R- She gave over when she were expecting, you see?
One thing I meant to ask you Horace, and if I don’t ask you I’ll forget. You said that you rented this house when you first came to it. I know this is going to sound crazy now, but what was the rent of this house when you came into it in 1936?
R- Twelve and sixpence, everything. It were enough to say what houses there were in Earby, it were a good house but we paid 12/6 and I think the rent’d happen he 3/6 or half a crown or 3/6. And water rate in as well.
Yes. Now wait a minute. I’m not just .. now when you said 12/6, …
R- In old money.
What did that consist of, that was the rent of the house…
R - And the rates was in it.
Oh the rates was in as well.
R- And the water rate. You see, that landlord, he’d have a rake off for paying that rate to the council, he were responsible I think. They do yet don’t they? They used to do.
Now then I’m not sure. It could be.
R- They do, they’ve a discount.
Aye, for collecting the rates.
R- For being responsible. They, the landlord pays on demand. Well I don’t. Ever since we bought this house, and they do in Earby you get your rate paper in two halves. Well we paid one half and then waited six months and paid the other, we always have done. And when we went under Pendle, they banged it all in in one lot. Well, I said we’ve been here for forty years and that’s how I pay, I’m not changing it for Pendle or anyone else. And he [the rate collector] weren’t for taking it and I says “Pick that money up, half of the rates, if I put it back in my pocket you won’t get it at all till the next six months so just please yourself!” So he signed the paper for half of it and tore the slip off it. For half of the rates and that’s the way I’ve carried on..
Aye. I’ve never paid it all. I think I did once and I regretted it after. So, how many children did you have?
R- One.
Just the one, Katherine, yes.
R- Yes well, my wife hadn’t such a good time. She had two or three operations after she was born, prolapses. And we never had any more, well, I don’t think she could have, couldn't have any more children.
(900)
(45 min)
So this house, basically, was furnished as it is now.
R - Yes.
Now you worked at Rycrofts right through the war. And you were in the warehouse all that time. Now then, at the end of the war presumably, well you tell me what happened that made you change your job.
R - Well there were a stop notice put on you, reserved occupation. And at the end of 1944 that were taken off.
SCG/09 March 2003
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