CHILDHOOD AND WORK, 150 YEARS AGO.

[Stanley]

CHILDHOOD AND WORK, 150 YEARS AGO.


Written 28 December 2000

It’s very tempting to look at the past through rose coloured spectacles. I was reminded of this recently when I was asked by a young lad what it was like being in the army. I found that I had to really force myself to tell him about the bad bits, what immediately sprang to mind was the good things, the laughs we had and the friends I made. It struck me that local history suffers from the same problem, it is more comfortable to address the ‘good old days’ than some of the realities of life. I promise I’ll try to avoid this trap and this week we’ll look at childhood in Barlick in the late 19th century.
There’s a phrase for you, ‘in the late 19th century’. How much does this convey to a ten year old child in the first days of 2001? Forgive me if I talk to my younger readers this week. I want you to try to imagine what it was like to be your age 150 years ago. The first thing you would notice would be the conditions at home, you would almost certainly be part of a large family. Let’s base this on someone who actually lived then, a man called Billy Brooks who was born on 26th September 1882 in Barlick. His father was called Jim and he used to weave at Wellhouse when Billycock Bracewell owned it. By 1880 Billy's cousin Robinson Brooks had started in a small way at Clough Mill with 86 looms. He offered father Jim a job as a tackler on £1.50 a week. At the time Jim was living in a small cottage in Newtown where the carpet shop is now. He was married to a lass called Anna who came from Herefordshire, she always got called Annie. Billy was the first of eleven children. That’s right, I haven’t made a mistake, eleven children and two adults lived in that tiny house with two rooms upstairs and two down.
There isn’t enough space here to describe everything in the house even though that wouldn’t really be a big job, there was so little in there. The only heating was an open coal fire in each of the two rooms downstairs. They had gas lighting downstairs, this was just a jet of burning gas like a fishtail, what used to be called a split burner. There was no light or heat upstairs at all. There were no carpets, just bare stone flag floors with a home made rug in the front room. The only curtains were lace curtains and for privacy at night there were roller blinds that could be pulled down. There was hardly any furniture apart from a table, a chest of drawers and a couple of chairs. No running water in the house, no bathroom, the toilet was outside in the back yard and was simply a bucket under a wooden seat that was emptied once a week by the council scavenger who came round with a box cart and emptied the buckets into it.
Your mother did all the cooking on the open fire in the kitchen and did the washing by hand once a week, always on a Monday, in the back yard in a metal barrel called a dolly tub. There was no radio, no television, no computers, in fact nothing that you would use nowadays to amuse yourself apart from an odd book or two.
In Billy’s case he went to the School on Rainhall Road, the Wesleyan School where the schoolmistress was Emma Brooks. [The building which is now the Community Centre] How were you dressed? Let’s suppose you were a lad, you probably had a cap, a vest, a long sleeved shirt with no collar, a woolly jumper, short trousers, woollen stockings and clogs with wooden soles, shod with iron hoops. In case you were wondering, I haven’t forgotten the underpants, you didn’t have any, your trousers were lined with cotton if you were lucky and that was all. The lasses wore a vest, a frock, big knickers that were more like shorts and showed below the hem of the dress, woollen stockings and clogs just like the lads. Another surprising thing was that many of the younger boys were dressed like their sisters, some lads weren't 'breeched' until they were six or seven. You only had a bath once a week, always on Friday night and this was done in a tin bath in front of the fire in the kitchen, first one in got the cleanest water! If you were lucky you had your own bath hung on a hook on the wall in the back yard, if not you had to wait until the neighbours had had their bath and then you borrowed theirs!
You started school when you were five years old, until then you had been looked after by your mother who stayed at home while your dad worked. Occasionally a mother worked in the mill if she only had one or two children and in that case paid someone to look after her children while she wasn’t there. This cost four shillings a week (20p.), it doesn’t sound much but was a lot out of a wage of perhaps twenty four shillings (£1-20p.) School started at nine in the morning with prayers and usually a song to remind you that you were British. When I was at school in 1940 we still used to sing ‘Jerusalem’, ‘Hearts of Oak’, ‘The British Grenadiers’ or something like that. The most important subjects were reading, writing and arithmetic with a bit of history and geography thrown in. The idea was to teach you enough to enable you to be a useful worker in the mills.
At ten years old you were given a test to find out how well you had learned and if you passed this you started work in the mill. That’s right, at ten years old. By the time Billy was ten, his father was working at Long Ing Shed where Robinson Brooks had moved with 421 looms. Jim Brooks was a taper now, this was an important job because he had to prepare the warps for the weavers to use in their looms and so he got more money. Mind you, he needed it, remember he had eleven children to support! Apart from the fact that the owner of the firm was his cousin, his uncle Willy Brooks was the manager at Robinson Brooks and was looking after Jim because of the size of his family.
Billy was given his certificate of education at ten years old and had to go down to the mill at Long Ing to be examined by the doctor in the mill office. Billy says that this was only a formality because nobody was ever rejected on the grounds of ill health, if you could stand up and breathe you passed! The doctor knew only too well that the child’s family needed the extra money.
Once you had passed the medical you started working ‘half time’ helping an experienced weaver with six looms who taught you to weave in return. You didn’t get paid by the mill management, the weaver you were helping gave you money out of his or her own wage. Billy got two shillings and sixpence a week (12 ½ p) which he gave to his mother. He got one old penny for himself. (Less than 1p.) He worked mornings in the mill and afternoons at school one week and then mornings in school and afternoons in the mill the following week. My mother worked half time and she told me that she always liked the work in the afternoon week best because she didn't have to get up at six in the morning to go to the mill. This went on for three years until he reached thirteen years old when he left school for good and started work in the mill full time. If you had learned well you got two looms and could make perhaps £1 a week. You gave this to your mother and she gave you a penny in the shilling pocket money (8 ½ p) and kept you in food and clothes at home.
So what could you do in the way of entertainment with a shilling a week? The answer is not a lot, there was no cinema in Barlick then and you had to make your own entertainment. Because you were working so hard you were in the habit of going to bed early, usually when it got dark because even if there was something you could do in the house, there wasn’t enough light to see, remember that thirteen of you were making do with one gas lamp! Most of the time was spent playing about outside with your friends. One of Billy’s favourite occupations was going for long walks in the countryside. There was always the railway station which was where the Pioneer Store is now, you could go down there and watch what was going on in the railway yard. Even more exciting was the slaughterhouse in Newtown. This was in a barn which stood where the Occasion Gift shop is now. John and David Raw who farmed at Coates were the slaughter men and Billy says they used to watch the animals being killed and felt sorry for them. If they were killing pigs they would beg a pigs bladder off the slaughter men, blow it up and use it for a football.
I’m sorry to say they sometimes got up to mischief as well, nothing that would harm anyone but usually something that made people look silly so they could have a good laugh. I daren’t tell you what these were in case it gives any of you ideas that will get you into trouble. Come to think, I can tell you one trick because you won’t be able to do it nowadays. This wasn’t Billy Brooks, it was another old friend of mine called Ernie Roberts. He was playing in the street near his home on John Street in Wapping one day and the scavengers were at work emptying the pails from the outside toilets into a ‘box cart’. This cart was drawn by a horse and was simply a large wooden box or tank with a hole in the top to empty the buckets into. There was a small door at the back worked by a lever which was how the cart was emptied on to the land when it was full. All the dirt out of the buckets was spread on farmland as manure.
When the scavengers had emptied a bucket they sprinkled the inside with some disinfectant powder before putting it back in the small door at the back of the toilet. While the men were doing this, Ernie got the idea that if he pushed down on the lever at the back of the cart, it might be interesting to see what the men would do. He thought for a minute and then did it and ran off. All the contents of the cart fell out into the road and flowed down the hill towards the Methodist Chapel! Can you imagine the mess and the smell! The men had to clear it up as best they could and scatter disinfectant powder all over the road. Ernie told me that at the time he thought this was great fun and he never got caught!
There’s lots more I could tell you but we’ve run out of space for this week. Next time you’re feeling bored or the batteries have run out on your computer game, think about Billy Brooks and Ernie. No matter how bad things look, you’ve a far easier life than they had in those days so look on the bright side. Your mother might ask you to tidy your room but she’s not going to make you go into the mill when you’re ten years old! Things could be worse. Next week we’ll have look at work in the mill and some of the troubles that arose from time to time.

28 December 2000