I must say something of Betty, my other friend. She had no mum, just her dad, brother Kenny, and sisters Ruby (the eldest), and the twins - Molly and Evelyn. I remember going to see the twins when they were born. Betty took me upstairs to see her mum and the new babies. They were like little dolls! Her mum had had a bad time having them, and not too long afterwards she shocked everyone by dying suddenly of typhoid fever. She wasn't very old.
Many people died in those days with T.B., diptheria and typhoid. There weren't the vaccines then, and people tended to be undernourished compared with today. I am afraid that as I see things now we seem to be rapidly going back to those days. The present tory government is turning the clock back, and all those things that my dad (and many like him) fought for, are being forgotten. Hard won rights are being gradually eroded. There is lots of apathy and very little thought nowadays, and people don't help each other like they used to do when I was young.
On the subject of diptheria - our Edie was only three when she got it. She did not, however, seem to be terribly ill with it. I slept with her, and I never contracted it. They shipped her off to Ackton Hospital and we were all heartbroken! Mum and I would walk down there every night and look at the bulletin board. At first it was 'very ill' then it got down to 'fairly ill' then (at last!),'much better'! We were all very happy when she started to pick up I remember. She had been in hospital for over six weeks and we hadn't been allowed to see her at all. When mum finally brought her home she had forgotten about us! (But not for long - we soon had her up and playing about!) In those days, if someone had an infectious disease the authorities would come and stove the house, and then pin a warning notice on the door, which would instruct people to stay away for a week or two!
By now mum had got her job back at the bank and also we managed to do a bit more pea pulling and potato 'scratting'. The potato job was, I recall, very hard, because the weather was getting cold. We always managed to get some grey peas and potatoes, and we were never cold, because we always went to the muck stacks and picked coal! We were trespassing in doing this, but we didn't care. We would go up under the tippers with dad; sometimes the overhead tube would tip water and if you didn't move smartish you would get wet through! If you were lucky you would soon fill a sack with coal.
On one occasion dad was coming across the pit fields with a sack of newly picked coal perched upon an old bike. To his horror he spotted the local bobby coming in the opposite direction! What could he do? After a bit of quick thinking, he threw the whole lot, bike and all, into the adjacent pit dam! We had to go down there the next day and fish the bike out! Luckily for us the water wasn't too deep at that end.
One of the pit dams was covered in coal dust about five feet thick. We called it 'bug dust'. Our Bill would go down and dig it out to make into coal bricks. He would sell it for sixpence a bag - it gave him a bit of spending money. It's funny how we never saw danger in anything in those days. There was about six feet of water under the 'bug dust'...... if Bill had fallen in he would've drowned. (He couldn't swim, as we have already seen). Someone must have watched over us. Parts of the 'muckstacks' where we went coal picking were red hot. It would burn the soles of your shoes! Dad used to go to one pit stack at Glasshoughton which was particularly dangerous. We weren't allowed to go there. The local farmer was a right old nark! He would plough the fields up to stop the coal pickers going to the stacks, but they had him beat! They would beat the path twice as wide as before! He couldn't stop them, and he had no legal recourse as the footpath was a public right-of-way.
The weather seemed so much different then. The summers were very hot. We would go around in shorts and old pumps throughout the summer months. We would sit on the doorsteps till dark, it was so warm. Mum would put flatcakes and pies on the windowsill to cool, and no-one would even dream of taking them. In those days we were very poor, but you could leave anything outside and it wouldn't be stolen.
Margy and I would put our Edie in the pushchair and walk to Pontefract Park. Mum would make us a big bottle of lemonade from lemon crystals and some jam sandwiches. We would have a grand picnic! Dad would take us sometimes, and we would stand on the Park Hill to watch the races, sometimes using grandad's field glasses, which we often borrowed.
Grandad had a big allotment up at North Featherstone and he would often bring us cabbages and lettuce. Our Bill helped him to do some of the digging and weeding. Our Bill's mate lived nearby on a poultry farm. There were two childen there, Leslie and Edna. Their mum, Mrs Dawes, was Margy's auntie. We would go down the field and feed the hens and ducks for Mrs Dawes, and we would paddle in the beck and gather the duck eggs from the banks. We would be given half a dozen eggs to take home for our teas!
Leslie and our Bill used to dare each other to go into the hen pens at dusk. The hens would be on their perches, but on the floor big rats would be scuttling around! Every now and then Mr. Dawes would have a purge, and they would take a couple of whippets down and let them loose. I have seen as many as thirty rats laid out on the green!
On one occasion when Betty, Margy and myself were playing down Mr. Dawes' fields it was a stifling hot day. We stripped off all our clothes and went swimming in the beck. Well, as you might guess, someone spotted us and tipped off our parents! What a scandal that caused!! I got belted and Margy got kept in. I think Betty, though, got away with it. Her dad had enough on his plate bringing them all up!
Ruby, the eldest girl got all the work at their house. I would go round and she would be scrubbing the clothes in the 'peggy tub'. I sometimes helped her with the big wringer. Betty would help sometimes, but she liked to be off and out if she could get away with it! She had a great way with the lads had my friend Betty! She had all the charm I never had. The boys chased after her! As for Margy, well, she was like me. She was a nice looker with nice wavy hair, but she didn't have the way with lads that Betty had. As for poor Ruby, she never had much time for anything except housework and looking after the twins! Mr. Pell worked in the pit, and he liked to have his pint on the way home, so Ruby was left home with the lot.
Betty had an aunt Evelyn who lived up the road. They were a bit better off. She would make all the dresses for the Sunday School Anniversary. The twins would look really lovely! Sometimes Mr. Pell would make peas in the set pot and he would sell them. (The set pot was a boiler with a little coal fire under.) We could get a pint pot full of peas for about twopence. (I have never, since, tasted mushy peas that were so good!). Next day they would boil the clothes in the same set pot!
Betty and Margy did well at school. They passed their exams and went to the grammar school, and I was left on my own at the old school. They didn't forsake me however, as we were still mates at home. Around this time we had another friend, Edna Dawes, Leslie's little sister. She was Margy's cousin... and she haunted us! we would hide all over the place trying to dodge her, but it was no use! we would always end up with her sooner or later!
At the top of the street where we lived Mr. Dawes had a shed where he kept his nanny goats. He had two nannys and a billy goat. More often than not he kept the billy fastened on a long rope in the field. Woe betide anyone who dared to cross that field! The goat was an old rogue! It could belt across that field in two minutes flat and 'tup' you on the backside! It was a better guard for the poultry farm than any dog could ever hope to be! our Bill and Leslie would go up to milk the goats and Margy and me would follow them. The boys would squirt us with milk and chase us out! ........ So we would go next door to another big shed, to feed Tommy Rushton's horse. Tommy was a local greengrocer who kept his horse and cart there. He and his wife Hannah went to the same chapel as us.
Every Sunday we would go out for a long walk with mum and dad and we would call in at aunt Emma's. Some Sundays we would visit North Featherstone Cemetery. One particular Sunday I remember very well. We were putting some flowers on grandma's grave and our Bill spotted grandad coming up the middle path. Bill dashed across to him and tripped over a grave. He went headfirst into a gravestone and burst his nose! What a mess!! There was blood everywhere! We couldn't stop the bleeding so we had to call at Doctor Thomas's on the way home. He cauterised it, and our Bill was in bed for two days after that, feeling decidedly poorly!
During the school holidays dad would take us blackberrying and elderberrying. Mum would make pots of jam and blackberry pies galore! My favourite was blackberry and apple dumplings. "That will stick to your ribs!" mum used to say! Dad made elderberry syrup and wine. The syrup was very good in winter if you had a cold. Still on the subject of food, mum made the best custard pies I have ever tasted. She would send me up to Day's farm for a quart of old milk. Om baking days she would make two pies and a stone of bread. I would help her knead it up. Mum always made her pie crusts with dripping. My cousin Mabel would always come down for some pie, such was its universal popularity.
< I will always remember that fatal Christmas when dad announced that this year he would make the Xmas Cake! He got to work, and he cake wasn't too bad until he decided to ice it. What he did to that icing I will never know! It was like cast iron! You needed a hammer and chisel to cut it!
We also had other disasters at Christmas time.... One year dad was helping a man with his stall at Castleford Market, and he was given some little lanterns to put on the Christmas Tree. All we had to do was to fit little candles in them. We duly fitted all on the tree and lit the lanterns up, whereupon one candle fell over and set the tree alight! What a panic! Dad kicked the smouldering tree down the front steps and all our little wassail cups were broken. (Years later, in Bradford, we called them wassail 'bobs', sometimes corrupted into 'wesleybobs'.) We couldn't get another tree so dad came up with a bright idea - we would make a Mistletoe Bough. He got two wooden rims off an apple barrel and put one inside the other, then he thickened the boughs with newspaper and then we cut out some sheets of coloured tissue paper, in a curly pattern. When the 'Mistletoe Bough' was finally finished, it looked lovely! Dad hung it from the ceiling, and we put a big piece of real mistletoe in the middle of it. Everyone who came admired it. We kept our Mistletoe Bough, and each year thereafter we would add new layers of tissue paper to it.
Grandad used to go to auction sales and one time he bought me a lovely doll in a glass case. I think today that it was not so much a toy as for display. I did not, of course, think so then! It was dressed in tartan and all around it was a Scottish diorama, decorated here and there with wassail cups. Mum was ill in bed, and I nattered and nattered to have the doll out of the case! Dad took it out for me to play with, but alas, my joy was to be short lived.
When I got up next morning I found the house covered in sawdust! It was all that was left of the doll. Our dog, Prince, had torn it to pieces! I never seemed to have any luck with dolls. (The wassail cups however, were not wasted, and we used them for years afterwards on our Xmas tree; (grandad was most annoyed when he heard what had happened to the doll).
On the subject of pets, our Prince was only with us for about two years. He got run over by a bus. One Sunday we were out walking, and dad made the fatal mistake of letting him off the lead! He saw another dog over the road, and ran across to it. Coming back, he ran straight into the path of the bus. It killed him outright. We were all heartbroken, he was such a good dog. Dad buried him in the back garden, and soon afterwards aunt Emma gave us a kitten, but we had no luck with that either....... Our Bill was coming up from the cellar with an armful of logs, and as he reached the top of the steps one of the legs rolled off and killed the kitten. He was ever so upset.
After that aunt Emma would never give us another kitten, even though it had been an accident. We did however, get another kitten from a friend, and it lived for fourteen years! We even took it to Bradford with us. We rubbed its feet with butter but it got out and walked all the way to Featherstone (over twenty one miles!). We eventually managed to get her back, but the journey had been too much for her, and she died of pneumonia. She was called Dinky. Our Bill was still accident prone as ever. When not drowning he was falling off bikes! Once he fell off a tree, broke his wrist, and ended up in Pontefract Royal Infirmary! Another time he came riding down the backs at Featherstone and demolished Mrs Randall's gate! She made him get a hammer and nails and fix it.
We used to play cricket up the backs in summer. The saying was 'pay for your own china', because so many windows went! Dad got really fed up of having to put windows in. On one particular day our Bill put the ball through Mrs Newsome's window..... Dad wasn't very pleased when we told him! Anyway, he got some picture frame glass and reglazed Mrs Newsome's window; then he rounded us up to go down home. When we got there, mum had gone out and left no key. Dad was so annoyed, he slammed himself down on the big kitchen windowsill. (It was a lean-to scullery, with a big low window). There was a loud crack and the window cracked right across! His face was a picture I can tell you! I was the smallest one, so he shoved me through the pantry window to open the door from the inside. Why we didn't think of that in the first place I don't know!
Grandad Hirst was a right character! He would tell us kids about his boyhood, living on a canal boat on the Aire and Calder Navigation. Uncle Harry was grandad's younger brother. He told us that when he was young, they never wore any shoes, and the only sweet cake that they ever had was on one occasion, when the river flooded the pub at Horbury Bridge, and the cake tins were floating around in the cellar! The landlady no longer fancied it, so she gave it the boat lads!
Grandad said that his father used to own two canal boats at one time, but he lost one through drinking and gambling! As a result of this grandad vowed that he would never drink or gamble like his father. He was true to his word. He became the Superintendent at the Chapel. He had a big family, but they never wanted for anything. He worked as a miner all his life. My dad followed him into the pit, and so did his brothers Jack, and Nathan. Uncle Jack died of silicosis, aged 56, whilst Uncle Nathan who had never liked pit work, eventually went into farming, becoming a farm labourer and a church organist near York. (His daughter, Rose still comes over from York to see us.... 1995 ).
But back to those hard days in Featherstone. This following story illustrates two aspects of Christianity... All the work was starting to get to mum and she took ill, and was badly in need of a special aid which she could ill afford. The aid, we were told, would cost about twenty five pounds, which was an awful lot of money in those days, and my dad was sickened because we could never hope to get that kind of money. Anyway, he had to do something, so he plucked up his courage and asked Mr. Bullock, who was the head man at the Chapel, if he would lend him the money. What do you think he said? He told him that if dad painted the chapel inside and out he would lend him the money! Dad said nothing. The following day he was in the grocer's shop, and happened to mention it about mum. Mr. Dawes, the grocer, put his hand in the till and gave dad the money right away. "Pay me when you can, lad," he said. I must point out that we had lived in Featherstone for over five years, and had attended chapel every Sunday. Mum had never owed a penny in her life. We might have been poor, but we were scrupulously honest. Dad went and painted the chapel and then he told old Bullock to stuff his money!! (I won't say where!).
This same man and his family ran buses all over the area and was one of the richest men in the district! (We know now, how he managed to stay rich too! Certainly not through Christian charity.) Dad managed to pay Mr. Dawes back, and he told us that any time we needed a helping hand we could always turn to him for a loan! So much for the Chapel!
Guy Fawkes night was a great occasion in Featherstone. We would make big bonfires using wood and coal, and we would roast any amount of potatoes on them! The fires would still be in the next day. Despite our lack of money, dad always managed to get us some fireworks. Our Bill always had bangers. Not me though! I always liked rockets and roman candles. Our Bill always had a pocket full of rip raps, and he would go around putting them under chairs! They made everybody jump about! They dont seem to make them nowadays. Mum would make plot toffee and parkin and would have a high old time!
Every weekend mum and dad would take us to Castleford or Pontefract. We would put our Edie in the pushchair and walk there and back. We would go shopping in Castleford Market. Things were very cheap there. Dad would get cut price chocolate and then he would sell it at home. He would make a copper or two, which helped out. Sometimes (as I have said), he helped a man who had a stall there and he would get things given. One treat at Castleford Market I remember was a big brass weighing scale with a red velvet seat. Mum would always let us get weighed for a penny. Another thing that stuck in my memory was an old chap who sold conger eels. They were like big snakes, and they fascinated me. We would take our own sandwiches and buy tea in the market.
Also when in Castleford we would go to the Queen's Theatre to see the variety. It cost about sixpence in those days to get a seat up in the 'gods'. It was a 'birdseye' view up there! We would try to get near the man who was working the spotlight, to get a better view. He got to know us kids right well. I liked the chorus line best of all, and I was really stage struck at that time. I must have been about twelve years old!
On other days we went to Pontefract. We would walk over Morgan's Fields onto the Park Side. We would go to the Alexander Theatre and sometimes to Pontefract Castle. There was, I recall, an old tank from the Great War in the grounds. We just loved to climb into it and reckon on we were driving! Once we were taken down into the dungeons. The steps were old and worn, and it was very, very dark. It must have been a terrible thing to have been confined in there. Justice must have been rough all those centuries ago. I went back to Pontefract Castle recently. It was very run down, and I'm sure it could be done up a bit! These old places are our heritage. Every year, I recall, we went to 'Ponty Statice'. This was a very big fair, and we always got brandy snap, and dad always managed to win a coconut!
We had a good picture house in Featherstone called the Hippodrome. We used to call it the 'Hip'. We would go to the 'tuppenny rush' on Saturday afternoons sometimes. We would watch serials with Tom Mix... and Doctor Fu Manchu! There was one I liked ... 'The Green Archer'. It was really bedlam with all the shouting and cheering! Margy didn't go very much. She used to go in the evening with her mum and dad.
At the side of the 'Hip' was the Fairground. The fair came about twice a year and we managed to scrape about sixpence up to go. A tanner went a long way in those days!
Margy and I joined the New Library and we used to go there every week to change our books. Sometimes we would come back over the pit fields. On one particular day, I recall, it was lovely and warm, so we decided to climb up one of the stacks. We didn't know it, but on the top of the stacks there was a pit dam. As we breasted the top of the stack we got a right shock. There must have been about ten or eleven lads and blokes in the dam, all swimming stark naked! We flew down that stack and we never told anybody! It wasn't the done thing in those days, people were much more modest.
In winter the pit fields made a real sledge run. We would come down there pell mell! One chap had a big sledge with a light on it. He would shove all us kids in the middle and down we would go! (The only snag was that we would all have to help pull it back up the slope!)
When I look back, they were poor but happy days. I must mention now about my cousins, who lived in Carlton Street. (We, by the way, lived in Stanley Street!) There was Annie, Florence and May. There was Annie's husband, Bob, and their dad, uncle Bill. Aunt Ada had died quite young, leaving our Annie to bring up the two younger ones. She was like a mother to them all, and she still mothered them right up to her death at the age of seventy two! Uncle Bill was destined to live with our Annie until he was eighty-two.
Our Annie and Bob were the caretakers for the Wesleyan Chapel at North Featherstone. We would go up there sometimes, with our Florence and May, but we preferrred our own chapel, the Ebenezer. I am sorry to say that one chapel was eventually pulled down and the other one is now a works of some kind.
I was brought back to my childhood days though, quite recently. Not too long ago I went to see my cousin Celia at Darton, and we went to he Anniversary of their chapel. It was lovely to see the youngsters on the platform, singing away! Years ago mum came to live at Featherstone with aunt Ada and uncle Bill. She looked on Annie, Florence and May as being her sisters practically! Mum was married from their house, and our Bill was born there!
My uncle Bill sometimes went coal picking with dad, because like him, he was in and out of work. I would go round sometimes to see them and our Annie would be kneading a stone of bread up. She was a very good cook. Her bread was the best I ever tasted! She also did pickled herrings (which I liked). Uncle Bill was a lover of all the old hymns, and he would be usually heard singing them as he went about his business!
Mum had an uncle Will who would come to see us from Allerton Bywater sometimes. He was a great chap, and my mum thought the world of him. He would call round to see our Annie for a couple of hours, then he would come to our house. He liked a drink of beer, but our Annie wasn't too keen on that, with her being at the chapel! Because of this, he would send our Bill round to the off licence with a quart jug, and him and dad would sit nattering. He always smoked thick twist, and the air would be laden with tobacco smoke. They would argue for hours on politics and the state of the country, and how they were going to put the world to rights, to hear them go on! Many things they said make sense to me now.
Uncle Will was married to aunt Alice and he had three girls and one boy. We went to Allerton Bywater to see them a few times. Aunt Alice, (in 1987) was still going strong at the age of ninety two! (but poor uncle Will died in his fifties).
Uncle Will and his tobacco reminds me of he time when grandma Dann sent our Bill to the shop for some thick twist. It was for uncle Herbert, he chewed it when he was working down the pit. Our Bill must have thought it was 'spanish', so he took a bite and swallowed it! When he got back home he was a delicate shade of green! Grandma had to give him some salt and water to make him sick! She said it served him right!
Washing day in Stanley Street, Featherstone, in 1933. I would be about twelve years old. Mum would light the coal fire in the living room. Then she would light the 'copper' fire in the kitchen, using a copper shovel filled with hot coals. I would get the job of filling the copper with water. In those days it was called a set pot. Then out would come the 'peggy tubs', a rubbing board and the 'peggy stick' or 'posser'. We also had a big wringing machine in the corner. All the clothes were rubbed in the tub on the rubbing board. All the whites and towels were boiled in the set pot and then rinsed in cold water in the tub before being put to the wringer. It was a major 'operation'. When the washing was done we had to empty the set pot and tubs and then wash the kitchen floor. The floor was laid with red and blue tiles and it looked lovely when it was clean.
Mum had tabbed rugs on all the floors, and coconut matting in the living room. The fireside was blackleaded every week and it shone! That was one of my jobs. Also the doorsteps were 'yellow stoned' every week. We had a coal oven, and mum made lovely pies and bread. I loved the flatcakes she made... she would put them on the windowsill to cool off. Could you do that today? No fear!! Many times when we went to bed we left the door unlocked. No-one would dream of taking anything. You could leave anything outside, secure in the knowledge that it would be there the next morning. How times have changed! We went to a museum the other week, and I saw all the things we used in our home when I was young ..... even mum's old flat iron! They are now 'antiques', so what does that make me??!! Times have changed, but have they changed for the better? I think not. There are too many idle hands nowadays!
It was when we were living in Stanley Street that I scalded my foot! There was the biggest 'blackclock' I had ever seen in the sink! I was so scared that I dropped the kettle and the boiling water caught my foot! I hated 'blackclocks' and they seemed limitless in that street!
Time marches on ever so quickly, and things are changing. Our Bill is now fourteen and I am thirteen, but dad is still out of work. So our Bill decided to try for a job on the screens at the pit. It was a filthy, hard job, sorting the coal on a moving belt. The boss was an absolute slave driver! Our Bill was so tired when he came home, that he would go straight to bed after tea, which wasn't him at all! His hands were always cut about and his nails broken. He stuck it about a month, and then mum made him pack it in.
Meanwhile our Florrie and May had gone to live in Bradford. They had established themselves in 'digs' and had started working at Illingworth's Mill. Soon afterwards, Annie and Bob followed them, when Bob was offered a job as Caretaker of the Girlington Wesleyan Chapel. With the chapel came a big house, and there wa plenty of room for Florrie and May and also Uncle Bill, who secured a job too, at Ickringill's Mill. I didn't know it then, but a wind of change was in the air, and their sudden good fortune was a portent of things to come.............................
copyright © Annie.E.Jarratt 2002
One of the pit dams was covered in coal dust about five feet thick. We called it 'bug dust'. Our Bill would go down and dig it out to make into coal bricks. He would sell it for sixpence a bag - it gave him a bit of spending money. It's funny how we never saw danger in anything in those days. There was about six feet of water under the 'bug dust'...... if Bill had fallen in he would've drowned. (He couldn't swim, as we have already seen). Someone must have watched over us. Parts of the 'muckstacks' where we went coal picking were red hot. It would burn the soles of your shoes! Dad used to go to one pit stack at Glasshoughton which was particularly dangerous. We weren't allowed to go there. The local farmer was a right old nark! He would plough the fields up to stop the coal pickers going to the stacks, but they had him beat! They would beat the path twice as wide as before! He couldn't stop them, and he had no legal recourse as the footpath was a public right-of-way.
The weather seemed so much different then. The summers were very hot. We would go around in shorts and old pumps throughout the summer months. We would sit on the doorsteps till dark, it was so warm. Mum would put flatcakes and pies on the windowsill to cool, and no-one would even dream of taking them. In those days we were very poor, but you could leave anything outside and it wouldn't be stolen.
Margy and I would put our Edie in the pushchair and walk to Pontefract Park. Mum would make us a big bottle of lemonade from lemon crystals and some jam sandwiches. We would have a grand picnic! Dad would take us sometimes, and we would stand on the Park Hill to watch the races, sometimes using grandad's field glasses, which we often borrowed.
Grandad had a big allotment up at North Featherstone and he would often bring us cabbages and lettuce. Our Bill helped him to do some of the digging and weeding. Our Bill's mate lived nearby on a poultry farm. There were two childen there, Leslie and Edna. Their mum, Mrs Dawes, was Margy's auntie. We would go down the field and feed the hens and ducks for Mrs Dawes, and we would paddle in the beck and gather the duck eggs from the banks. We would be given half a dozen eggs to take home for our teas!
Leslie and our Bill used to dare each other to go into the hen pens at dusk. The hens would be on their perches, but on the floor big rats would be scuttling around! Every now and then Mr. Dawes would have a purge, and they would take a couple of whippets down and let them loose. I have seen as many as thirty rats laid out on the green!
On one occasion when Betty, Margy and myself were playing down Mr. Dawes' fields it was a stifling hot day. We stripped off all our clothes and went swimming in the beck. Well, as you might guess, someone spotted us and tipped off our parents! What a scandal that caused!! I got belted and Margy got kept in. I think Betty, though, got away with it. Her dad had enough on his plate bringing them all up!
Ruby, the eldest girl got all the work at their house. I would go round and she would be scrubbing the clothes in the 'peggy tub'. I sometimes helped her with the big wringer. Betty would help sometimes, but she liked to be off and out if she could get away with it! She had a great way with the lads had my friend Betty! She had all the charm I never had. The boys chased after her! As for Margy, well, she was like me. She was a nice looker with nice wavy hair, but she didn't have the way with lads that Betty had. As for poor Ruby, she never had much time for anything except housework and looking after the twins! Mr. Pell worked in the pit, and he liked to have his pint on the way home, so Ruby was left home with the lot.
Betty had an aunt Evelyn who lived up the road. They were a bit better off. She would make all the dresses for the Sunday School Anniversary. The twins would look really lovely! Sometimes Mr. Pell would make peas in the set pot and he would sell them. (The set pot was a boiler with a little coal fire under.) We could get a pint pot full of peas for about twopence. (I have never, since, tasted mushy peas that were so good!). Next day they would boil the clothes in the same set pot!
Betty and Margy did well at school. They passed their exams and went to the grammar school, and I was left on my own at the old school. They didn't forsake me however, as we were still mates at home. Around this time we had another friend, Edna Dawes, Leslie's little sister. She was Margy's cousin... and she haunted us! we would hide all over the place trying to dodge her, but it was no use! we would always end up with her sooner or later!
At the top of the street where we lived Mr. Dawes had a shed where he kept his nanny goats. He had two nannys and a billy goat. More often than not he kept the billy fastened on a long rope in the field. Woe betide anyone who dared to cross that field! The goat was an old rogue! It could belt across that field in two minutes flat and 'tup' you on the backside! It was a better guard for the poultry farm than any dog could ever hope to be! our Bill and Leslie would go up to milk the goats and Margy and me would follow them. The boys would squirt us with milk and chase us out! ........ So we would go next door to another big shed, to feed Tommy Rushton's horse. Tommy was a local greengrocer who kept his horse and cart there. He and his wife Hannah went to the same chapel as us.
Every Sunday we would go out for a long walk with mum and dad and we would call in at aunt Emma's. Some Sundays we would visit North Featherstone Cemetery. One particular Sunday I remember very well. We were putting some flowers on grandma's grave and our Bill spotted grandad coming up the middle path. Bill dashed across to him and tripped over a grave. He went headfirst into a gravestone and burst his nose! What a mess!! There was blood everywhere! We couldn't stop the bleeding so we had to call at Doctor Thomas's on the way home. He cauterised it, and our Bill was in bed for two days after that, feeling decidedly poorly!
During the school holidays dad would take us blackberrying and elderberrying. Mum would make pots of jam and blackberry pies galore! My favourite was blackberry and apple dumplings. "That will stick to your ribs!" mum used to say! Dad made elderberry syrup and wine. The syrup was very good in winter if you had a cold. Still on the subject of food, mum made the best custard pies I have ever tasted. She would send me up to Day's farm for a quart of old milk. Om baking days she would make two pies and a stone of bread. I would help her knead it up. Mum always made her pie crusts with dripping. My cousin Mabel would always come down for some pie, such was its universal popularity.
< I will always remember that fatal Christmas when dad announced that this year he would make the Xmas Cake! He got to work, and he cake wasn't too bad until he decided to ice it. What he did to that icing I will never know! It was like cast iron! You needed a hammer and chisel to cut it!
We also had other disasters at Christmas time.... One year dad was helping a man with his stall at Castleford Market, and he was given some little lanterns to put on the Christmas Tree. All we had to do was to fit little candles in them. We duly fitted all on the tree and lit the lanterns up, whereupon one candle fell over and set the tree alight! What a panic! Dad kicked the smouldering tree down the front steps and all our little wassail cups were broken. (Years later, in Bradford, we called them wassail 'bobs', sometimes corrupted into 'wesleybobs'.) We couldn't get another tree so dad came up with a bright idea - we would make a Mistletoe Bough. He got two wooden rims off an apple barrel and put one inside the other, then he thickened the boughs with newspaper and then we cut out some sheets of coloured tissue paper, in a curly pattern. When the 'Mistletoe Bough' was finally finished, it looked lovely! Dad hung it from the ceiling, and we put a big piece of real mistletoe in the middle of it. Everyone who came admired it. We kept our Mistletoe Bough, and each year thereafter we would add new layers of tissue paper to it.
Grandad used to go to auction sales and one time he bought me a lovely doll in a glass case. I think today that it was not so much a toy as for display. I did not, of course, think so then! It was dressed in tartan and all around it was a Scottish diorama, decorated here and there with wassail cups. Mum was ill in bed, and I nattered and nattered to have the doll out of the case! Dad took it out for me to play with, but alas, my joy was to be short lived.
When I got up next morning I found the house covered in sawdust! It was all that was left of the doll. Our dog, Prince, had torn it to pieces! I never seemed to have any luck with dolls. (The wassail cups however, were not wasted, and we used them for years afterwards on our Xmas tree; (grandad was most annoyed when he heard what had happened to the doll).
On the subject of pets, our Prince was only with us for about two years. He got run over by a bus. One Sunday we were out walking, and dad made the fatal mistake of letting him off the lead! He saw another dog over the road, and ran across to it. Coming back, he ran straight into the path of the bus. It killed him outright. We were all heartbroken, he was such a good dog. Dad buried him in the back garden, and soon afterwards aunt Emma gave us a kitten, but we had no luck with that either....... Our Bill was coming up from the cellar with an armful of logs, and as he reached the top of the steps one of the legs rolled off and killed the kitten. He was ever so upset.
After that aunt Emma would never give us another kitten, even though it had been an accident. We did however, get another kitten from a friend, and it lived for fourteen years! We even took it to Bradford with us. We rubbed its feet with butter but it got out and walked all the way to Featherstone (over twenty one miles!). We eventually managed to get her back, but the journey had been too much for her, and she died of pneumonia. She was called Dinky. Our Bill was still accident prone as ever. When not drowning he was falling off bikes! Once he fell off a tree, broke his wrist, and ended up in Pontefract Royal Infirmary! Another time he came riding down the backs at Featherstone and demolished Mrs Randall's gate! She made him get a hammer and nails and fix it.
We used to play cricket up the backs in summer. The saying was 'pay for your own china', because so many windows went! Dad got really fed up of having to put windows in. On one particular day our Bill put the ball through Mrs Newsome's window..... Dad wasn't very pleased when we told him! Anyway, he got some picture frame glass and reglazed Mrs Newsome's window; then he rounded us up to go down home. When we got there, mum had gone out and left no key. Dad was so annoyed, he slammed himself down on the big kitchen windowsill. (It was a lean-to scullery, with a big low window). There was a loud crack and the window cracked right across! His face was a picture I can tell you! I was the smallest one, so he shoved me through the pantry window to open the door from the inside. Why we didn't think of that in the first place I don't know!
Grandad Hirst was a right character! He would tell us kids about his boyhood, living on a canal boat on the Aire and Calder Navigation. Uncle Harry was grandad's younger brother. He told us that when he was young, they never wore any shoes, and the only sweet cake that they ever had was on one occasion, when the river flooded the pub at Horbury Bridge, and the cake tins were floating around in the cellar! The landlady no longer fancied it, so she gave it the boat lads!
Grandad said that his father used to own two canal boats at one time, but he lost one through drinking and gambling! As a result of this grandad vowed that he would never drink or gamble like his father. He was true to his word. He became the Superintendent at the Chapel. He had a big family, but they never wanted for anything. He worked as a miner all his life. My dad followed him into the pit, and so did his brothers Jack, and Nathan. Uncle Jack died of silicosis, aged 56, whilst Uncle Nathan who had never liked pit work, eventually went into farming, becoming a farm labourer and a church organist near York. (His daughter, Rose still comes over from York to see us.... 1995 ).
But back to those hard days in Featherstone. This following story illustrates two aspects of Christianity... All the work was starting to get to mum and she took ill, and was badly in need of a special aid which she could ill afford. The aid, we were told, would cost about twenty five pounds, which was an awful lot of money in those days, and my dad was sickened because we could never hope to get that kind of money. Anyway, he had to do something, so he plucked up his courage and asked Mr. Bullock, who was the head man at the Chapel, if he would lend him the money. What do you think he said? He told him that if dad painted the chapel inside and out he would lend him the money! Dad said nothing. The following day he was in the grocer's shop, and happened to mention it about mum. Mr. Dawes, the grocer, put his hand in the till and gave dad the money right away. "Pay me when you can, lad," he said. I must point out that we had lived in Featherstone for over five years, and had attended chapel every Sunday. Mum had never owed a penny in her life. We might have been poor, but we were scrupulously honest. Dad went and painted the chapel and then he told old Bullock to stuff his money!! (I won't say where!).
This same man and his family ran buses all over the area and was one of the richest men in the district! (We know now, how he managed to stay rich too! Certainly not through Christian charity.) Dad managed to pay Mr. Dawes back, and he told us that any time we needed a helping hand we could always turn to him for a loan! So much for the Chapel!
Guy Fawkes night was a great occasion in Featherstone. We would make big bonfires using wood and coal, and we would roast any amount of potatoes on them! The fires would still be in the next day. Despite our lack of money, dad always managed to get us some fireworks. Our Bill always had bangers. Not me though! I always liked rockets and roman candles. Our Bill always had a pocket full of rip raps, and he would go around putting them under chairs! They made everybody jump about! They dont seem to make them nowadays. Mum would make plot toffee and parkin and would have a high old time!
Every weekend mum and dad would take us to Castleford or Pontefract. We would put our Edie in the pushchair and walk there and back. We would go shopping in Castleford Market. Things were very cheap there. Dad would get cut price chocolate and then he would sell it at home. He would make a copper or two, which helped out. Sometimes (as I have said), he helped a man who had a stall there and he would get things given. One treat at Castleford Market I remember was a big brass weighing scale with a red velvet seat. Mum would always let us get weighed for a penny. Another thing that stuck in my memory was an old chap who sold conger eels. They were like big snakes, and they fascinated me. We would take our own sandwiches and buy tea in the market.
Also when in Castleford we would go to the Queen's Theatre to see the variety. It cost about sixpence in those days to get a seat up in the 'gods'. It was a 'birdseye' view up there! We would try to get near the man who was working the spotlight, to get a better view. He got to know us kids right well. I liked the chorus line best of all, and I was really stage struck at that time. I must have been about twelve years old!
On other days we went to Pontefract. We would walk over Morgan's Fields onto the Park Side. We would go to the Alexander Theatre and sometimes to Pontefract Castle. There was, I recall, an old tank from the Great War in the grounds. We just loved to climb into it and reckon on we were driving! Once we were taken down into the dungeons. The steps were old and worn, and it was very, very dark. It must have been a terrible thing to have been confined in there. Justice must have been rough all those centuries ago. I went back to Pontefract Castle recently. It was very run down, and I'm sure it could be done up a bit! These old places are our heritage. Every year, I recall, we went to 'Ponty Statice'. This was a very big fair, and we always got brandy snap, and dad always managed to win a coconut!
We had a good picture house in Featherstone called the Hippodrome. We used to call it the 'Hip'. We would go to the 'tuppenny rush' on Saturday afternoons sometimes. We would watch serials with Tom Mix... and Doctor Fu Manchu! There was one I liked ... 'The Green Archer'. It was really bedlam with all the shouting and cheering! Margy didn't go very much. She used to go in the evening with her mum and dad.
At the side of the 'Hip' was the Fairground. The fair came about twice a year and we managed to scrape about sixpence up to go. A tanner went a long way in those days!
Margy and I joined the New Library and we used to go there every week to change our books. Sometimes we would come back over the pit fields. On one particular day, I recall, it was lovely and warm, so we decided to climb up one of the stacks. We didn't know it, but on the top of the stacks there was a pit dam. As we breasted the top of the stack we got a right shock. There must have been about ten or eleven lads and blokes in the dam, all swimming stark naked! We flew down that stack and we never told anybody! It wasn't the done thing in those days, people were much more modest.
In winter the pit fields made a real sledge run. We would come down there pell mell! One chap had a big sledge with a light on it. He would shove all us kids in the middle and down we would go! (The only snag was that we would all have to help pull it back up the slope!)
When I look back, they were poor but happy days. I must mention now about my cousins, who lived in Carlton Street. (We, by the way, lived in Stanley Street!) There was Annie, Florence and May. There was Annie's husband, Bob, and their dad, uncle Bill. Aunt Ada had died quite young, leaving our Annie to bring up the two younger ones. She was like a mother to them all, and she still mothered them right up to her death at the age of seventy two! Uncle Bill was destined to live with our Annie until he was eighty-two.
Our Annie and Bob were the caretakers for the Wesleyan Chapel at North Featherstone. We would go up there sometimes, with our Florence and May, but we preferrred our own chapel, the Ebenezer. I am sorry to say that one chapel was eventually pulled down and the other one is now a works of some kind.
I was brought back to my childhood days though, quite recently. Not too long ago I went to see my cousin Celia at Darton, and we went to he Anniversary of their chapel. It was lovely to see the youngsters on the platform, singing away! Years ago mum came to live at Featherstone with aunt Ada and uncle Bill. She looked on Annie, Florence and May as being her sisters practically! Mum was married from their house, and our Bill was born there!
My uncle Bill sometimes went coal picking with dad, because like him, he was in and out of work. I would go round sometimes to see them and our Annie would be kneading a stone of bread up. She was a very good cook. Her bread was the best I ever tasted! She also did pickled herrings (which I liked). Uncle Bill was a lover of all the old hymns, and he would be usually heard singing them as he went about his business!
Mum had an uncle Will who would come to see us from Allerton Bywater sometimes. He was a great chap, and my mum thought the world of him. He would call round to see our Annie for a couple of hours, then he would come to our house. He liked a drink of beer, but our Annie wasn't too keen on that, with her being at the chapel! Because of this, he would send our Bill round to the off licence with a quart jug, and him and dad would sit nattering. He always smoked thick twist, and the air would be laden with tobacco smoke. They would argue for hours on politics and the state of the country, and how they were going to put the world to rights, to hear them go on! Many things they said make sense to me now.
Uncle Will was married to aunt Alice and he had three girls and one boy. We went to Allerton Bywater to see them a few times. Aunt Alice, (in 1987) was still going strong at the age of ninety two! (but poor uncle Will died in his fifties).
Uncle Will and his tobacco reminds me of he time when grandma Dann sent our Bill to the shop for some thick twist. It was for uncle Herbert, he chewed it when he was working down the pit. Our Bill must have thought it was 'spanish', so he took a bite and swallowed it! When he got back home he was a delicate shade of green! Grandma had to give him some salt and water to make him sick! She said it served him right!
Washing day in Stanley Street, Featherstone, in 1933. I would be about twelve years old. Mum would light the coal fire in the living room. Then she would light the 'copper' fire in the kitchen, using a copper shovel filled with hot coals. I would get the job of filling the copper with water. In those days it was called a set pot. Then out would come the 'peggy tubs', a rubbing board and the 'peggy stick' or 'posser'. We also had a big wringing machine in the corner. All the clothes were rubbed in the tub on the rubbing board. All the whites and towels were boiled in the set pot and then rinsed in cold water in the tub before being put to the wringer. It was a major 'operation'. When the washing was done we had to empty the set pot and tubs and then wash the kitchen floor. The floor was laid with red and blue tiles and it looked lovely when it was clean.
Mum had tabbed rugs on all the floors, and coconut matting in the living room. The fireside was blackleaded every week and it shone! That was one of my jobs. Also the doorsteps were 'yellow stoned' every week. We had a coal oven, and mum made lovely pies and bread. I loved the flatcakes she made... she would put them on the windowsill to cool off. Could you do that today? No fear!! Many times when we went to bed we left the door unlocked. No-one would dream of taking anything. You could leave anything outside, secure in the knowledge that it would be there the next morning. How times have changed! We went to a museum the other week, and I saw all the things we used in our home when I was young ..... even mum's old flat iron! They are now 'antiques', so what does that make me??!! Times have changed, but have they changed for the better? I think not. There are too many idle hands nowadays!
It was when we were living in Stanley Street that I scalded my foot! There was the biggest 'blackclock' I had ever seen in the sink! I was so scared that I dropped the kettle and the boiling water caught my foot! I hated 'blackclocks' and they seemed limitless in that street!
Time marches on ever so quickly, and things are changing. Our Bill is now fourteen and I am thirteen, but dad is still out of work. So our Bill decided to try for a job on the screens at the pit. It was a filthy, hard job, sorting the coal on a moving belt. The boss was an absolute slave driver! Our Bill was so tired when he came home, that he would go straight to bed after tea, which wasn't him at all! His hands were always cut about and his nails broken. He stuck it about a month, and then mum made him pack it in.
Meanwhile our Florrie and May had gone to live in Bradford. They had established themselves in 'digs' and had started working at Illingworth's Mill. Soon afterwards, Annie and Bob followed them, when Bob was offered a job as Caretaker of the Girlington Wesleyan Chapel. With the chapel came a big house, and there wa plenty of room for Florrie and May and also Uncle Bill, who secured a job too, at Ickringill's Mill. I didn't know it then, but a wind of change was in the air, and their sudden good fortune was a portent of things to come.............................
copyright © Annie.E.Jarratt 2002