eleven. You had exams then, and you had to get so many before you could go up into the next class. If you didn't get that, you stopped down there. I know some boys that stopped in number one till they left school at fourteen. We had one teacher who could take everything – every subject the whole of the year. Within a fortnight he knew every boy, and within one month he had you all weighed up. Them what could get on with their work used to go up the back of the class. All what were backward he had down in front of him. Always forty, forty-five boys in one class.
We were harum-scarums. It didn't matter about clothes – there was no school uniform then. As long as your hands and face were clean, that was it. You could go to school and you'd see some boys with a pair of trousers on and you wouldn't know what was the original cloth, it was patched so much. The only thing he looked at was your face and your neck and your hands. If he caught you, you went out to the wash-house. It was cold water – and you washed yourself, too. If you didn't wash he'd send a couple of older boys to wash you.
Elsie Beckwith
I remember holding my parents' hands as we walked into the hall, and we got seats downstairs. There was a sort of platform, and this boy was there. I thought his father was there – there was someone with him anyhow – but I was just a kid and I wasn't interested much. This boy said he was going to speak about salvation, and he took as his text ‘How can we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?’ I was only a kid, I was just listening, but I remember the text because my father wrote it down, he was an awful fellow for writing things down, he used to read them over and over again. I used to get it off, and mother said, ‘Oh yes, that was the boy preacher. Hebrews 2.’
It was just a boy preaching, but everybody was talking about it at the time. It was at Howard Hall, a picture hall, I think, they had taken it over just for that Sunday evening. It was unusual, that's why people were so interested. They came from different chapels, Presbyterians, all kinds of things.
It was unusual to see a black person. If they came in on the boat they kept to where the boat was, the lower parts of North Shields, where the quay is. That's where they went into lodgings. As a child you weren't allowed to go there. Clive Street was terrible, the people living there would frighten you.
Steve Tremeere
Hard to believe, but poor or not, beggars an' all, we all went to Sunday school. It was a sprat to catch a mackerel. You had a stamped card. If you went to school on Sunday, the teacher would stamp it with a star. You had to have so many stars before you qualified to go to the school treat in the summer. Father used to give us whatever he could muster then – generally sixpence. We'd all go down there in Chitty and Mannering's carts, what they used to cart the flour about in. They used to fill them up with us kids and take us all the way up the town to where the mill is, along the river bank there. At the back was all fields, and that'd be where we had the treat – muffins and bits of bread and lumps of seed cake and one thing and another. Then there would be little sports as your ages went up. You got a little memento, and there were little stalls where you could spend your tanner. Farthing worth of dosh – toffee. It used to be wrapped up in newspaper. You could never get it off the paper once she'd wrapped it.
Anne Taylor
If you wanted a doctor you had to go round to one of these church people and get this form to fill in and take that down to the doctor's. Then he pleased himself whether he came or not. No welfare state then. If you hadn't got a ticket and you hadn't got half a crown, he wouldn't come in the house and look at you. The most dangerous things were diphtheria and scarlet fever when we were kids. Everybody had a dose of senna pods or brimstone and treacle every week. Kept you healthy – regular. For colds we used to have to go down to the chemist for two penn'orth of Friar's Balsam, penn'orth of aniseed and a penn'orth of sweet nitre. Father would get a spoonful of sugar and put three drops on it. Two drops for us kids, three for him. Your cold was cured. In the winter he'd get Russian tallow and he used to rub it on our chests, and since our clothes weren't thick, he'd wrap sheets of brown paper round us.
There were children, some was starved. You could see the poor little buggers – they come out with rickets – irons on their legs. Or you might be playing with this girl, same age, and when she got about twelve, you could see it coming, consumption. That was very rife amongst them. Any rate, most kids weren't so big as now, because they never had free milk or anything like that. Half of them never had dinners – but we always got one good one at the weekend.
Billy Brown
On a Saturday night that bedroom window was our look-out. The parents would think we were asleep, but we'd get up there and watch all the old women down there, all chin-wagging. If there was a fight we could watch it in the grand circle without anybody interfering with us. We often got up there in the middle of the night and had a look. There was a big lodging house out the back of us – Irish navvies in it, all sorts while they was building the breakwater. Irish navvies and their women. You should have heard the language of them! No wonder we learnt it when we was little. Drink – fight among theirselves. Then you'd see the old women popping down there every half-hour – sometimes less than that – penn'orth of porter. In the pub at the bottom or else the one over the other side of the road – The Cause Is Altered. They drunk more beer indoors than what the old man drunk outside. Then they used to shout at him because he'd been drinking!
Don Murray
My dad used to do everything wrong. He went with the choir one weekend to a cricket match. He only went as a spectator, but they were a man short so they decided he should keep wicket. He had no flannels and he decided not to take his bowler hat off. Well, the ball came to him and instead of using his hands, he stuck the hat out and the ball shot straight through it. When he came home that night, he stood in the doorway as drunk as he ever could be, with this little lid on top of his broken hat and a lot of sausages hanging out of his coat pocket down one side. He'd bought them for Mum as a gift offering to keep her sweet. She took one look at him and called him a damned fool. He looked at her. ‘What have I done wrong now, my dear?’ he asked. He was a very funny man. He was a very good singer, too. He used to sing in the pubs on the Saturday night. Mum would go down there to listen and when they came home they'd quarrel. I used to lay in my bed shivering, dreading them coming home and quarrelling.
Reece Elliott
In those days we were lucky if we had one pair of boots – no shoes, dear me. Many a time we walked with two odd uns. People who were well off would hoy them out over the wall, we used to get them and pick all the good uns out, you'd be maybe running about with a six and a seven, or maybe a seven and a nine.
My father cut my hair, and you know what he used to cut my hair with? Horse clippers. He was in with the horsekeeper at the pit, who used to give him big combs, when they were too bad for the horses. They had that many teeth broken, they used to give them to my father. You can imagine what that was like, sitting on the bloody cracket, getting your hair cut, all off, little bit top left, aye, the yakkers cut! Just a bit left on top. With the teeth being broken, he must have gone o'er the bugger umpteen times, like a bad cut in a cornfield! I used to be laughing when he was doing us. Sitting there squawking and scringing. My mother, not showing sympathy, would say, ‘Be canny, you bugger, sit still!’ Especially our Lance, he had a cowlick, Father says, ‘I cannot do nowt with this bugger, it'll all have to come off!’
Bessy Ruben
My friend Dinah's mother had a cheese stall down Petticoat Lane every day except Saturdays. I used to go with Dinah to collect this cheese. One day, we dawdled along, taking our time,
