BARLICK LIFE 1900 ONWARDS. (5)

[Stanley]

BARLICK LIFE 1900 ONWARDS. (5)

08 June 2001

The story so far, we left Ernie Roberts in 1926 when he was living at 1 John Street. He was ten years old and had a sister and an elder brother called Fred who had started work. His younger brother Wilson went to York Street school with him and his sister and his mother Margaret was working as a weaver. She had her wage, a war widow’s pension and most of Fred’s wage. The total family income was probably about £3 a week. This wasn’t a fortune but was certainly much better than the days not long before when they were on parish relief and surviving off 25/- a week. (125p.)
I was asking Ernie about entertainment and he told me about the time that Margaret saved up enough money to pay for a week in Blackpool. The arrangements for this holiday were slightly different than a modern holiday. They went on what was known as the ‘bed and cruet’ system. When they went down to catch the train they took with them a large tin box containing enough food to last the family for a week. When they arrived at the digs they hired the bedroom for a week and any food that needed cooking was seen to by the landlady who made a small charge. Ernie says they had a good week and he fell in love for the first time with a ‘little brunette’ who he never saw again.
There was plenty of entertainment in Barlick as long as you had a bob or two in your pocket. There was no TV of course but the lads went to the cinema four nights a week on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. The way it worked was that there were two cinemas, the Majestic and the Palace. (There was the Alhambra down Butts as well until it burned down in April 1923. This was before the Roberts family came into money so Ernie never went there.) Each cinema changed programme on Thursday, so Monday was Majestic night, Tuesday was the Palace, Wednesday was a night off and Thursday and Friday were back to the Majestic and Palace. On Saturday, if they were flush, they would get on the train for Earby and go to the Albion.
They got a surprise free trip to the Albion one Saturday night when Raymond Riding, one of Ernie’s mates, told them he had been digging where they emptied the silt from the gully grates in the street and had found a pound note. Ernie smelt a bit of a rat because he said that the note wasn’t wet or crumpled, he knew that money could be found at the tip, they often went scavenging there and found odd coins but he had never heard of a pound note being found before. Anyway, the trip was too good to turn down. About four of them set off, called in at Atkinson’s for a new cap apiece, got on the train for Earby and had a good night out at Earby pictures with a bag of nuts thrown in as well. When they got off the train at Barlick, Mrs Riding was waiting on the platform for them and they soon realised that all was not well, it turned out that Raymond had been sent to Bonny’s shop with a pound note to pay the shop book. He had taken the change back to his mother but somehow, had managed to keep hold of the original pound. Ernie said that Raymond got a good hiding, had to apologise at the shop keeper and pay the money back at so much a week. Ernie got to keep his cap and so did pretty well out of it.
I asked Ernie if they ever got into any trouble with the police and he said that apart from the odd enquiry about a broken window they were never in trouble with the law. The nearest they ever got to it was when they raided the mill yard to cut canes out of the sides of the big basketwork skeps that weft was delivered in. They used them to make bows so they could shoot arrows. He said this was dangerous stuff, if you were caught with a penknife in your pocket ‘you were sent to Siberia’! Similarly, if they went ‘chubbing’, that is collecting wood for their Fifth of November bonfire, they only went after trees and branches. If they had been caught with a weft box lid or something else that was from the mill they were in real trouble.
Ernie told me about drink in the town. The predominant brew was Massey’s Burnley Ales. He often went to the outdoor department which was the side door at the Seven Stars to get a jug of Nut Brown Ale for his mother. If any of the kids had a cold she would dip a red hot poker in the beer and give it to them to get a sweat going. Another favourite order if things were flush was a noggin of rum, a noggin is a quarter of a pint, you took your own bottle and got it filled at the pub. Very few women went into pubs, it was frowned on in those days. A notable exception was an old lady called Sarah Ann Rocky who lived in the little hovel opposite the butcher’s shop in Walmsgate, Ernie told me he had seen her being brought back home in a wheelbarrow many a time. She lived on her own on ten shillings a week (50p.). He remembered her once having a small fire and when the brigade came to rescue her she begged them to get her bread crock out, when they did they found she had been using it for a toilet!
There was a lot of drunkenness in those days, Ernie says a lot more than today, it was not unusual to see men staggering about in the street. As Ernie said, they worked all week, gave their wives as little as they could to run the house and boozed the rest away at weekend. They would also save up, perhaps for twelve months, and then ‘strike t’rant’, they would simply go into the pub and start boozing and carry on until the money had run out, this could take a week sometimes. Then they would go back to work and be almost teetotal until they had saved up enough to do it all again. There’s a famous book about Salford called ‘The Classic Slum’ and Roberts, the author, describes exactly the same thing there, he says that ‘The quickest way out of Salford was four pints’. Ernie agreed with this, they were drinking to escape but he had no sympathy for them because of the way they treated their wives.
I asked Ernie if anyone had ever tried to warn him of the evils of drink, he said that he had signed the pledge many a time in order to get the free coffee and buns that were on offer at the temperance meetings but he always kept his fingers crossed as he signed! He reckoned this made it all right. He could never understand why the religions were so dead set against drink. As he said, ‘They had wine at the Last Supper didn’t they?’ Once he realised this he dropped the idea of temperance and enjoyed a drop for the rest of his life.
The only time they went to chapel was at Whitsuntide when they could join in with the sports and get free coffee and buns. He remembered him and his mates getting scrubbed up to go one Whitsunday and the preacher, a Mr Kay who was a weaver by trade, said ‘All boys who haven’t been to service in the last month must leave’, so they had to get out and never got their afternoon out. This really upset Ernie, all those years after I could see he was so angry at this man who had denied four poor lads an afternoon’s entertainment.
After the Alhambra burned down, the space where it had stood was used for an open air market and the fair used to set up there as well. This is the piece of ground where Butts Clinic is now, Ernie said that in later years it was a good courting shop as well! Next door, on the site where Carlson Ford have some modern buildings now was the Conservative Club bowling Green. Every now and then they would have a ‘Frizzle’, which was I suppose the equivalent of a modern barbecues but everything was fried in big pans. Ernie said that they were always made welcome there, they would get as much eggs, bacon and sausage as they could eat. Needless to say, they never missed one.
Ernie still had his odd jobs going, running errands and making a bob or two wherever he could. He said one of his regular jobs was weeding the garden for three teachers who lived at Heather View near Bancroft Shed. He used to go up there and work for sixpence an hour and get his tea made for him.
He told me about the street traders and entertainers who came round. There was one bloke who Ernie says seemed to be coming round all through his childhood. He used to sing just one song, ‘Where Is My Wandering Boy Tonight’ and the kids used to mock him by singing back, ‘He’s gone to the petty to have a shite!’ Ernie said that the funny thing was that when this bloke died they heard he’d left a row of houses at Colne in his will! There was another man who had a piano accordion and a good tenor voice, Ernie said they didn’t mock him because he was good and knew more than one song! There were street traders as well. One bloke used to sharpen knives and they called him ‘Flagger’ because he didn’t have a grindstone, he used to go round the corner and sharpen the knives on the flags or the kerb stone. Another man sold clothes props and every now and then, itinerant gypsies came round selling lace and clothes pegs.
We have to leave Ernie again for a while, he’s knocking on a bit now and next time we’ll have a look at what happened when he left school at the age of fourteen in 1930. I don’t know whether you will agree with me but with all its faults and failings the picture that Ernie is building up of Walmsgate and Westgate is of a very tight knit community which, though poor, was full of life. I know that infant mortality was dreadfully high, and we’ll have a look at some other health matters shortly but from the description it feels safe to me. There is no vandalism or street violence and nobody had any qualms about giving their kids freedom to roam.
Against this must be set the grim picture Ernie paints of the woman’s lot in this society. As Ernie said at one point, he is all in agreement with Women’s Liberty. He reckoned that the men treated the women like chattels and it was shameful. He even gets mildly critical of his father, who, though unfit for work, saw nothing wrong in saddling his young wife with another baby the year before he died. It was an honest place, but for some, a hard life.
Thanks for listening to me and you can contact me any time.

SCG/08 June 2001