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It was 1938 I lived with my dad, lodging with a large working
class family in a small house in Queen St. Batley. Queen
St. now demolished was a small mean street linked to Taylor
St. with a series of alleys and ginnels. The name of the
family was Hepworth, the oldest son was a story teller,
and I remember on winter evenings we used to sit round him
often when the gas mantel was broken and with only the light
from the coal fire and maybe a candle on the sideboard,
and he would tell a story. his rendering of Sweeny Todd
was a master piece.
My Mother and Father had divorced about three years earlier,
and my Mother, after keeping me and my two sisters for a
couple of years remarried, dumped me with my Dad and went
to live at St.Neots with her new husband, a railway signalman
she had met in Dewsbury who had been promoted to a large
signal box on the main line.
It was decided in the summer of 1938 that I would go for
a holiday with my mother, I was at this time 11 years old.
street wise and a scruffy little brat. The journey started
at Batley station, my dad took me to the station with a
luggage label with the address of my destination fastened
with a piece of string to my lapel, he put me on the train
and off I went on the great adventure. I got off the train
at Leeds and went off in search of the train to Peterborough,
the station was massive with people just rushing about,
steam engines blowing off, lots of noise and excitement
all around, I approached the guard of the London train and
asked him if the train would take me to Peterborough, he
gave me a look of amazement, read my label and said tha'd
better cum wi me and dumped me in the guards van. Well this
was just great, the train set off with a great shudder,
screeching and whistling and I looked around the van, there
was a goat , pigeons in boxes, piles of mail bags, parcels,
rolls of newspapers, two do, bicycles and lord knows what
else. The train was for ever stopping and when it reached
the big stations like Doncaster it was pandemonium in the
guards van Postmen throwing in more mail bags and the guard
throwing some out, people collecting their bikes, a fellow
dragging off his dog which was barking and growling, a new
dog was dragged in resisting all the way, I had never had
as much fun in my life and decided then and there that one
day I would be a railway guard. The guard gave me some of
his sandwiches and some hot tea out of a thermos and told
me tales of the Great Northern Railway of which he was very
proud to be part of, and all too soon after lots of stops
at places like Newark, Grantham and little places I had
never even heard of we arrived at Peterborough. I had to
say goodbye to my benefactor, he gave me threepence as a
parting gift to spend on my holiday.
After the hustle and bustle of loading and unloading, on
which I was now by the way something of an expert, which
no doubt I thought would put me in good stead when I grow
up and went looking for a job, my guard blew his whistle
and my favourite train ever, roared out of the station and
disappeared in a cloud of smoke. When the little local train
which was to take me on to St.Neots came puffing in it was
a bit of an anti climax and I got on board knowing full
well that I was not a local person but was a traveller from
far away. My Mother and Pat my sister, one of my sisters
Joy had since died in a school epidemic of diphtheria, met
me at St.Neots station which was not very impressive to
a traveller like me and was not much bigger than Batley.
They took me off to what was to be my new home for the next
few weeks, a row of very tidy council houses not far from
the station. At night I discovered you could hear the whistle
of the trains as they approached the station and the through
trains thundering by and you looked out of the window you
could see the glow from the fire box and the red sparks
from the fire lighting up the night, if only my mates from
Warwick Rd. School could be with me now, there was nothing
like this at Batley Carr.
On the first morning of my holidays I explored the shed
in the back garden and discovered that it contained what
seemed to be dozens of canaries. The birds were in home
made cages, made of wooden boxes with wire fronts and were
stacked one on top of another. It turned out that Peter,
that was the name of my mothers new husband bred canaries
and I remember thinking that they all looked alike and felt
that it would have been a lot better had they been budgies.
It was from this find that I went on to discover the wonder
of council house back gardens, there was homing pigeons,
rabbits, green houses full of tomatoes, gardens full of
chrysanthemums, dahlias, and even onions and leeks not to
mention fish ponds and fruit trees. The women too were very
special and they all seemed to have their speciality, sticky
toffee, flat cakes and home made jam, chocolate cake the
list was endless. It must be remembered that in those days
before slum clearance that council house tenants were selected,
they had to convince the council that they were clean and
tidy people and of good character.
At my very first day at the local school I found both the
teachers and pupils were sort of nice and a bit soft, when
the teachers hit you it was only with a ruler and they were
really gentle with it, the other kids didn't seem to want
to fight and I was very soon able to establish my position
as a person of some importance, I soon found if you gave
someone a bit of a bashing they would go crying to the teacher
or even tell their mother, a thing unheard of back in Batley
where the whole school would brand you a sissy.
Peter was a lot stronger than my dad, a sort of hard but
fair type, my mother seemed at first to be a bit soft but
I came a cropper the first time I put her to the test. We
were at an auction sale, for which my mother had a life
long addiction and there was a selection of boys books,
being addicted to reading I begged my mother to get them
for me. Well she fell out of the bidding when the price
went too high and I tried one of my sulks for which I was
famous, I even put on a bit of drama and laid on the floor
and went into a paddy, my mother reverted to her Yorkshire
roots and gave me a good kicking, dragged me up by the hair
and out of the saleroom which established our relationship
for the rest of the holiday and let me know the score. I
think when I left St. Neots most of the population including
my sister, who was my mothers favourite anyway, were pleased
to see the northern barbarian go. I left with some goodies,
my mother who was the worlds best dress maker and tailor
had made me some clothes and Peter gave me a canary in a
cage. The journey home must have been uneventful as I have
no clear memory of it, but I do remember that no one met
me at Batley Station and that I had to walk home with my
case in one hand and the cage in the other.
The contrast between Batley and St. Neots was stark, the
green fields, miles of river walks and the feeling of space
at St Neots contrasted with the massive woollen mills like
Theodore Taylors and Stubleys together with the hundreds
of small warehouses were like different worlds. There were
little warehouses tucked away in yards many employing only
a few people to sort rags to pass on to the shoddy trade.
Picture if you can a mountain of rags, with women sat on
the floor or on a seat made from rags sorting the wool from
the cotton and throwing then into their separate piles,
ripping the linings using a pare of cutters from suits and
jackets and in winter with very little heat if any wearing
top coats, wool hats and scarves, often borrowed from the
pile of rags. Picture the smell of old clothes and the fleas
and the odd rat in the dark corners of the warehouse and
in spite of all this the women laughing and joking together.
The problem of all being poor together is that you don't
know that your poor, but when you have been to Otley on
your bike and St.Neots on the train it makes you think.
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