The Horsekeeper's Daughter

by Jane Gulliford Lowes

  Edie Threadkell was a month shy of her eighth birthday when war was declared. Her father Robert was sixty-one, relatively elderly by the standards of the day (the average male life expectancy was still in the low fifties) but still a mariner. In the days before state pension, you worked until you could work no longer, until you died or if you were lucky, had some savings or adult children to support you through your dotage. Robert had been at sea for half a century, since he was a boy. He had witnessed the death of the age of sail and the dawn of the age of steam and he had no intention of allowing the outbreak of war to confine him to shore. Although Edie and Fanny did not notice any difference in terms of the amount of time Robert spent away at sea during the war years, Robert’s safety was no longer threatened just by harsh weather and high seas; the ships of the British Merchant Marine were now legitimate targets for the ultimate new weapon of the German Navy, the U-Boat.

  The merchant vessels and colliers that transported coal from the north-east pits to London and the major ports were under almost constant attack. Many were torpedoed and sunk, with great loss of life, including ships belonging to the Londonderry fleet, carrying coal from the Marquis’ County Durham collieries from Seaham Harbour. The trawler Helvetia was sunk in 1916, and the cargo vessel Vianna was lost in 1918 – its wreck still lies four miles east off the Seaham coast. One of the boats carrying bottles from John Candlish’s glass works hit a mine in 1917 and exploded, with the loss of four lives. The Lady Londonderry was sunk in the Thames Estuary, and the Lord Stewart and Lady Helen were torpedoed. Another of the Londonderry fleet, the SS Stewart’s Court was torpedoed within sight of Seaham. Thirteen of her crew were saved by the Seaham lifeboat, the Elliot Galer.63 The German U-Boats wrought havoc up and down the eastern coast of England, but it wasn’t just shipping that was targeted – they also possessed the capability to attack targets on land, as the residents of Seaham Colliery found to their cost.

  On the evening of 11th July 1916, New Seaham (as Seaham Colliery had now become known) was shelled by a German U-Boat, the infamous UB39. An estimated thirty-nine shells fell in the fields around Dalton-le-Dale and Mount Pleasant, and around the Mill Inn, but some hit the village directly, fatally injuring Mrs Mary Slaughter as she walked through the pit yard with her friend. At 14 Doctor Street, the home of Danish miner Carl Mortenson and his family, a shell came straight through the back wall, through the kitchen where Mrs Mortenson was standing, and landed by the front door; miraculously the shell failed to detonate, and the Mortenson family, including the children sleeping upstairs, were saved. All escaped injury.64

  A photograph still exists of the crew of UB39 standing next to the guns on the deck, grinning at the camera. This photograph was taken on 12th July 1916, the day after the attack on Seaham, and appears in the memoirs of UB39’s captain, Werner Fuerbringer. Known as FIPS, Fuerbringer was one of the German Navy’s greatest U-boat commanders. He had joined the German Navy as a cadet in 1901; by the end of the war, in 1918, he had sunk one hundred and two merchant ships and was awarded the Iron Cross, the highest German military honour. He continued to serve though World War Two, achieving the rank of Konteradmiral, finally retiring in 1943.65 In his memoirs, published in 1933, he describes in detail the attack on Seaham – he thought he was raining shells upon the ironworks. “I was assuming that the factory would have only a skeleton staff on the premises at night.” he recalled. “My objective was the destruction of war materials and not people.”66 In fact, he had of course targeted the pit, a mile or so inland.

  Robert Threadkell finally retired at the end of the war, worn out by a cold, brutal and perilous life at sea. The only record of his war service which still exists is a note card recording the issuing of his medals in 1919. Those medals are still in their tiny buff cardboard packets, and kept in the rough wooden box that Robert himself had made to while away the hours on a long sea voyage. For the first time since his early teens, he spent every day at home, in the little house in Caroline Street, with Fanny and Edie, where his older children from his first marriage would call to visit with his grandchildren. And every day he would walk down Frances Street, perhaps calling in at the Volunteer Arms for a pint and a smoke; drawn towards the docks, he would lean upon the railings and watch the tugs and pilots guide vessels of all sizes in and out of the harbour, past the little black and white lighthouse.

  Throughout the course of the war, amid the chaos and the hardships and the quiet desperation, every six months or so, a small brown envelope would arrive on the doormat of 6 Caroline Street, bearing an Australian postage stamp and Topsy Campbell’s unmistakable handwriting, bringing news and photographs from Tamborine Mountain and Upper Coomera. How Fanny and little Edie must have looked forward to these letters arriving; perhaps they spent many a long winter night together when Robert was at sea writing letters and drawing pictures, sorting newspaper clippings and photographs to be sent out to Queensland. And every few months, as he made his daily rounds with his horse and delivery wagon, William Campbell would pick up from the little post office at Upper Coomera a small brown envelope addressed to “Mr & Mrs W J Campbell, Guanaba, Upper Coomera, Queensland, Australia”. He would automatically begin to peel open the envelope and then he would remember, and stuff the letter back into his pocket.

  16

  The Turn of the Screw

  Any sense of optimism the people of Seaham and Seaton had possessed at the end of the war very soon diminished. The feelings of patriotism and euphoria did not last long, as the men who had fought in France and Belgium returned home, jaded and perhaps with a different view of the world. Gradually they resumed their ordinary jobs and occupations, in the coal mines, on the railways, in the docks, in the bottle works, and renewed their old battles against their employers. The Coalition government had taken control of the mining industry in 1917, at the height of the hostilities in Europe, and the miners leaders had hoped that this would be the first step towards nationalisation.

  Although the Londonderrys were still very much the “Lords of Seaham”, the death of the 6th Marquess in 1915 marked the beginning of the end of that family’s relationship with the town they had created. The new Death Duties Tax, or inheritance tax as we know it, crippled the Londonderrys and their fortunes began to wane. Many of the family’s assets and lands were sold off and they moved out of Seaham Hall completely.67 The Hall was offered up for auction by the 7th Marquis in 1922, but nobody wanted it, and this once grand dwelling which had hosted the cream of British high society began to fall into disrepair. The beautiful terraced gardens, once tended by a small army of gardeners, soon became overgrown with weeds and ivy; the white stucco walls shabby and peeling, the ballroom and grand salons damp and dusty. Seaham Hall was, quite simply, abandoned.

  Britain was on the brink of ruin after the war, and there was much talk in government of wage reductions as the industrialised world began to slip into recession. The government had retained control of the coal industry even after the war had ended, but were unwilling to force wage cuts on the miners in fear of strike action and political instability. The colliery owners had wrongly assumed that the economy would go into overdrive once the war was over, and were anxious to regain control. However, after a brief boom around 1919/20, coal exports actually began to fall quite dramatically in early 1921, and Lloyd George’s government couldn’t return the industry to the hands of its private owners quickly enough. Unemployment rates in mining communities went through the roof as miners across the country were laid off, and between three hundred thousand and four hundred thousand miners found themselves out of work with no income.68

  The nation’s collieries were returned to private ownership at the end of March 1921. The miners were devastated – nationalisation, which had seemed so close and an inevitability at the end of the war, was now further away than ever, and the mine owners responded to the tumbling coal prices in the only manner they knew – by implementing savage wage cuts, of up to forty-nine per ce
nt in areas of South Wales,69 and planning to return to the old system of district rates, in contravention of the national wage agreements which had been reached before the war. The Miners’ Union leaders suggested a pool system by introducing a levy on every ton of coal produced, so that the high output collieries could in effect subsidise those with poor outputs; the mine owners opposed the pool system as anti-competitive, even if it meant the less profitable collieries being abandoned and massive unemployment. It seemed that little had changed since the Londonderrys had stopped up the seams where the bodies of their employees lay so that production could resume after the 1880 explosion at Seaham Colliery. Profit before people.

  Unsurprisingly the miners rejected the owners’ new terms and conditions – from 1st April, 1921 any man who opposed his employer found himself “locked out” and unable to work. The dockers and the railway unions called a strike to support the miners, scheduled to start on 15th April. The government faced the very real possibility that two million men would be out on strike and the country would grind to a halt. Nationally, there was already a similar number of workers unemployed. With an eye on recent events in Russia, and fearing they would have a revolution on their hands, the government response was brutal and threatening. When negotiations between the miners’ leaders and Lloyd George’s cabinet broke down, a state of emergency was called, eighty thousand special constables were called up, and most disturbingly of all, machine gun posts were put in place at some collieries.70 The class war was threatening to become so much more than an ideological battle, ramped up by apocalyptic rhetoric on both sides.

  In a speech to the House of Commons, the Prime Minister warned that:

  “The nation is, for the first time in its history, confronted by an attempt to coerce it into capitulation by the destruction of its resources, and this menace is apparently now to be supplemented by a concerted plan to suspend the transport services which are essential to the life of the country…”

  Behind the scenes however, Lloyd George was trying to achieve a settlement, but negotiations were undermined by divisions in the miners ranks and, at the eleventh hour, on 21st April, 1921, a day remembered as “Black Friday”, the railway union leaders withdrew their support for the strike and, much to the relief of the government, the Triple Alliance of miners, dockers and railway workers unions was at an end.

  The miners fought until July 1921, when they were forced back to work through pure financial desperation, on terms even more savage than those on offer prior to Black Friday. The average pay for a miner fell from eighty-nine shillings and eight pence a week to fifty-eight shillings and ten pence.71 The miners faced brutal criticism from all quarters, and were rapidly losing public sympathy. An article published in The Spectator on 1st July 1921, captured the mood of the time:

  “The miners, so far as their wages are concerned, have remained idle for 3 months to no purpose. They are poorer by 3 months’ pay, and have gained nothing… The long strike has been a fresh proof of the futility and wickedness of great strikes…many of the miners will find that they have destroyed their own sources of employment. A number of mines are permanently flooded and abandoned…the miners have incurred the ill-will of their fellow workmen by their manifest selfishness.”72

  For the miners of Seaham, the fight was to last for another seventy years. For some, it never ends.

  Immediately after the strike ended in July 1921, and just a few months before Edie Threadkell’s fifteenth birthday, a young couple, John and Lydia Clyde, moved into the empty property next door at 7 Caroline Street, with their six month old daughter, also called Lydia. John was a miner at Seaham Colliery, where he had worked from the age of twelve; in 1915, he had enlisted in the army with his mates and his brother Sep, and was sent to northern France with the Light Infantry where he had served as a medical orderly and stretcher-bearer on the battlefields. John and Lydia were my great-grandparents, young Lydia my grandmother. I can still remember being shown by my grandmother, when I was very small, how to wind and apply bandages, as it was done in the field, just like John had taught her. Fanny, Robert and Edie took an immediate shine to the young Clyde family, and so began a close friendship between the two families that would last for generations, and which would ultimately result in Edie’s battered little case of photographs and letters coming into my possession.

  Another child, a boy, Jack, was born to the Clydes in 1923, and he was always Edie’s favourite.

  The 1920s and 1930s were hard, desperate times in Seaham and Seaton, as they were in many mining and heavy industrial communities throughout the country. For some, there seemed no way out of the grinding poverty and suicide rates in the town went through the roof. Between 1920 and 1937 it is estimated that over twenty residents took their own lives – some by hanging or other violent means, but most simply by just walking into the sea or throwing themselves from the pier. Just as the miners’ strike was ending, John Candlish’s bottle works shut down. The closure of the Londonderry Engine Works in Foundry Road followed shortly afterwards in 1924.

  Perhaps to remind his employees of the power his family had over their lives and to emphasise their authority, the 7th Marquis had a statue of his father, the 6th Marquis, erected outside the company offices at the south end of Terrace Green in 1922. It’s still there, opposite the cafes, estate agents and shops on North Terrace. The Londonderrys, their fortunes and interest in Seaham fading somewhat, decided to try to boost their coffers by sinking a third mine on the cliff tops within sight of Seaham Hall. Named Vane-Tempest after the famous Frances Anne Vane Tempest Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry, the first sod for the sinking of the shaft was cut in 1923. By 1929 the first coals were being produced, bringing desperately needed employment to Seaham’s townsfolk. This was to be the last survivor of the town’s great mines, finally closing in 1992. Today, there’s no sign it was ever there. If you reside in the affluent housing estate of East Shore Village, you are actually living right in the middle of what was the Vane Tempest pit yard. The Londonderry family had very little personal involvement with the town they had created after the sinking of their newest colliery, and were very infrequent visitors to Seaham.

  The Threadkells weren’t wealthy by any stretch of the imagination, but nor were they poor. Robert had looked after his finances very well during his years at sea; supplemented by Edie’s income from various menial jobs, the family “got by” throughout the economic decline of the 1920s. My mother recalls that they always had high quality, quite expensive furniture, and “nice” things in the house. In those days, the sense of community was strong, and neighbours looked after each other and so it was with the Threadkells and the Clydes. North-east mining folk of the day may have looked, spoken and indeed behaved roughly, but beneath the coal dust there were (and still are) golden hearts.

  The Clydes found themselves in desperate need of good neighbours in 1926, as once again the town’s miners came out on strike. The first Labour government, lead by Ramsay Macdonald, had been elected in 1924 but survived for only nine months. With the Conservatives, led by Stanley Baldwin back in power, at the end of June 1925 the colliery owners had announced an end to all national agreements and abolished the minimum wage; in many collieries, workers who refused to accept this were once again locked out. In May 1926, the General Council of the Trades Union Congress called a strike in support of over a million miners who had been locked out for failing to agree to the 1925 wage reductions. For ten days, one million seven hundred thousand British workers in all areas of transport and heavy industry – dockyards, gas works, shipyards, construction, engineering, railways – came out on strike. However, many within the TUC and the Labour Party had concerns that the strike would be hijacked by communists and revolutionaries, and support for the strike began to waiver within days. The government had been planning for a general strike for almost a year, and had plans in place to keep the country moving. There is every chance that, had Winston Churchill (then Chancel
lor of the Exchequer) got his way and placed armed troops at picket lines, the country could have descended into disaster. A Court ruling against one of the unions involved declared the strike illegal, and participating unions faced having their assets seized by employers. The TUC called off the strike on 12th May 1926.

  The miners stayed out. In a development that was incredibly unusual for the time, even King George expressed his sympathy with the strikers, famously warning, “Try living on their wages before you judge them.” Throughout the summer 1926, the miners stayed out, experiencing unimaginable hardships, many on the brink of starvation, supported only by the charity of good neighbours and church organisations who established soup kitchens to help feed the starving families. Neighbours like the Threadkells who weren’t on strike would “make an extra bit of dinner” if they could afford it, and take it next door where it would be gratefully accepted. As winter approached, many families resorted to burning their furniture or stealing coal to keep warm. Gradually, worn down by the grinding poverty, miners in other parts of the country began to return to work, but the Durham miners stayed out until the end of November, a month longer than any other coalfield.73 For seven long months, the men of Seaham and the surrounding areas stood firm but faced with a bitter winter without income, food and fuel, eventually they accepted the Union instruction to return to work, and returned to work on 30th November 1926. It should be noted that some of the colliery owners provided meals in schools, and declined to evict the miners who were unable to pay rent from their tied cottages. Whether they were motivated by benevolence or the fear of riot remains to be seen. Such was the impact of the strike upon the little community, my grandmother, Lydia, would often talk about it. She was just five and a half years old at the time, but the strike and its aftermath left an indelible mark upon her childhood.