by John Wright
Great-great-grandfather John Knights worked on the colliers that sailed up and down the east coast, and reputedly became quite wealthy after moving up through the ranks to command various ships. It was said that in later life he lived in some style in large and impressive houses in the more affluent parts of the town, with one story alleging that he had a sock full of gold sovereigns hidden up his chimney.
John’s eldest son, Henry Knights, was Gran’s father, and he too was a merchant seaman. In 1886, at the age of just nineteen, he married a twenty-year-old local girl called Caroline Martha Wanless who we always knew as ‘Granny Knights’. She was a live wire and a real character who was not averse to the odd tipple or a regular ‘flutter on the gee-gees’. By the time Gran was born, the family had fallen on hard times.
In 1906, when she was just sixteen years of age, Gran eloped to get married, leaving home wearing work clothes on top of her best clothes so as not to arouse suspicion. She knew all too well that her mother was dead set against the marriage to her twenty-six-year-old boyfriend. He was weather-beaten and had skin like brown leather as a result of working on the River Tyne in all weathers. Granny Knights called him a foreigner, as she was barely able to comprehend his broad Geordie accent. He had been blinded in one eye by having sand kicked in his face as a young boy. The couple had married at Trinity Church, North Ormesby, on the eastern edge of the town. Grandad always called her Lol and they had a hard but happy life for more than thirty years before death intervened.
My maternal Grandad, Archie Bradford, hailed from South Shields, County Durham, and was a chronic asthmatic but he nevertheless managed to find fairly regular employment. He worked mostly as a dock labourer or as a lighterman on the two rivers and his job involved unloading ocean-going ships on to the lighters. The ships, being of too deep a draught, had to be anchored in the deep channel in midstream. A lighter was a kind of wide barge with a shallow draught on which the goods were taken to the wharves to be lifted ashore by cranes and derricks. Grandad worked long hours over many sweltering summers and chilled-to-the-marrow winters, until two years before the war, he died after an asthma attack. He would ‘fear no more the heat of the sun nor the furious winter’s rages’. He lived just long enough to see his two eldest daughters wed and the first three of his grandchildren come into the world, these being Jimmy, me and George. Three years prior to his untimely death he had promised Renee that he would take her to see the opening of the Newport Bridge, but she developed several septic abscesses on her neck and was bitterly disappointed. Boils were all too common amongst the undernourished children of the area at that time.
Gran had endured a very hard life. It had been a long grim struggle for survival throughout the late 1920s and ’30s, the years of the terrible Great Depression, and, as a result, she had ‘lost’ five of her eleven children. It appears that great poverty invariably leads to a higher birth rate as having lots of children improved the odds of some reaching maturity. Three sons and a daughter died in their infancy, one of them being her firstborn son Archibald, named after his father, and a little later, a much loved, gentle and delicate daughter – named Florence after her mother – died at the age of only eleven years. She became ill after a rusty nail sticking up through the paper-thin sole of her boot punctured her foot. The tiny black spot under her big toe became infected leading to the septicaemia that killed her.
For many years Gran had lived on the edge of an abyss of uncertainty, just one of a warren of people who had to endure real hardship in squalid and wretched conditions. Fortunately for her, her eldest daughters were in work as domestic servants, enduring interminably long hours for miserably low wages. Like many sisters they didn’t always see eye to eye and Gran, losing patience with them, would say, ‘Can’t you two go five minutes without arguing?’ Mam worked as far away as Leeds for a time, but they managed to send a little money home to keep the family’s head above water. After marrying they were obliged to support their own families, but, luckily, Uncle John had started work as a trainee crane driver in the Teesside Bridge Steelworks on leaving school in 1933, and Renee became a domestic servant on leaving school four years later.
During the long hard years of the Depression, Grandad used to walk down to the nearby Newport wharf early every morning to see if the foreman was taking on any men, and, if he was lucky enough to get a day’s work, Renee would take him his bait (food) tin and a can of cold tea at the midday break. The work was hard and could be dangerous or even fatal. Gran’s elder brother John had died of suffocation after falling into a container of red ore powder. Gran was tough, resilient and stubborn and, although entitled to poor relief, she was far too proud to accept any form of charity. Although close to destitution at times, she would never beg, suffering her many and repeated hardships in silence. She would never let others see her emotional pain and gradually this rigid, grin-and-bear-it stoicism became the norm. She just got on with it because if she didn’t, she would go under.
Gran had an inner strength that seemed to be a strange mixture of fatalism, resignation and faith, and she somehow managed to maintain her dignity and the small decencies of life, accepting whatever fate threw at her. Although close to despair at times, she was never completely vanquished, saying, ‘There is always someone that little bit worse off than you.’ Sadly, the long years of grinding poverty, unremitting toil and repeated knock-backs gradually hardened her soul and the long years of struggle turned her into a sad and bitter woman in her twilight years.
Her neighbours – although rough and ready – were a plucky, strongwilled, independent lot, who were never servile. Desperation has a way of binding the poor together and the people of that close-knit community helped each other out in order to make ends meet. There was a powerful sense of belonging and they knew they could call on ‘Florrie’ for help in times of crisis. The strong helped the weak and the elderly, but most of them were worn out by the age of thirty-five and were old by forty-five. They believed and hoped that better times were just around the corner and things could only get better, unaware that there would be many more years of self-sacrifice and personal loss before their living conditions would improve.
Religion was their prop and hope of eternal salvation, offering material as well as spiritual help. It offered the promise of a final, blessed release from their earthly sufferings and misfortunes. Marx had called it ‘the opium of the people’. The local church, with two sombre, square twin towers at its westernmost end, was never a beautiful edifice. It stood dark and severe-looking, but solid and strong – an enduring refuge in times of adversity and an appropriate symbol of the gritty fighting spirit of the poor, long-suffering folk of our crowded neighbourhood.
2
Evacuation
By April 1939, the threat of war had grown and the government announced a scheme – called Operation Pied Piper – to evacuate some two and a half million children. Some adults, not directly required for the war effort, were also to be sent from the danger areas and would include many mothers, the elderly and the infirm. The word ‘evacuate’ means ‘to empty’, and it became an exercise in emptying the towns and cities likely to be targeted; the emphasis at the sending end being to get the evacuees out as quickly as possible. The fact that they were dealing with young and vulnerable human beings was often overlooked and the upheaval sometimes led to great distress and emotional pain. Powerful blood ties made it difficult to break up the clannish family units as life had little meaning to them except in terms of flesh-and-blood relationships. There was much fear of the unknown as mothers realised that they would be delivering their loved ones into the hands of ‘borrowed parents’. They would be living with complete strangers whom they knew nothing about. Many were extremely reluctant to let their children go, especially since so many sons, husbands and brothers had left to join the forces.
Governmental pressure was brought to bear on the wavering mothers and they were made to feel selfish and uncaring. It was implied that only bad parents would allow
their children to stay at home to face the dangers of enemy bombing. In many families the father was unemployed but they were proud men who hated having to go cap-in-hand to the National Assistance Board. It meant that they would have to eke out a meagre living from the pittance provided by the means-tested scheme known as the dole. They received dole money for each child and if the children were sent away they would lose it and find it very difficult to survive at all.
There was now much more government intervention in people’s lives and during the year leaflets had been issued setting out the details of the mass evacuation plan. Mothers of pre-school children could accompany their children to the relative safety of the countryside if they so wished, but all were required by law to register first. What thousands of mothers had secretly dreaded had come to pass. Schools were to be evacuated en masse, including many of the teachers, and the red-brick Victorian School on Greta Street, Middlesbrough, was just one of the many involved.
Poison gas, which had been used by both sides in the First World War, was the greatest fear and the government made plans to provide the whole population with free respirators. It was a mammoth task. Millions were boxed up prior to distribution and in Middlesbrough they were to be given out from the blue wooden police boxes dotted around the town. The schools handed out gas masks to the children and practices at using them were regularly carried out. The under-fives were to get a bright red-and-blue model known as a ‘Mickey Mouse’ mask, which was designed to make toddlers more willing to wear it, but these were not issued until later in the year.
In readiness, rehearsals were carried out involving my uncles, Archie and Harry, and my young cousin Jimmy. They lined up in pairs and practised marching as part of a long crocodile formation, carrying their gas masks in buff-coloured cardboard boxes that were suspended on a long loop of string. Plans to raise the school leaving age had recently been suspended and Archie was just about to start his final term in school when Gran decided that he should go and take care of the boys.
On 31 August further notices were sent to every household stating that the evacuation was imminent. Each school was given a number; the names of the children, with their school number, had to be written clearly in block capitals on a cardboard label or on a piece of thick, brown paper. This was tied on to the lapel of their coats and they were repeatedly told their school number in case they got lost in the crowds. Initially it seemed to be great fun and many of them thought that they were going on holiday to the country or the seaside. Most of the parents believed that the war would soon be over.
Gran became more upset as the day of the evacuation drew near. The night before they were to leave, the boys had a good scrub in the tin bath in front of the fire. After they had gone to bed, Gran sat staring with unseeing eyes at the changing shapes in the coal fire, trying to put the next day out of her mind, but to no avail. She had already lost her husband to chronic asthma and John was in the army; now her other two boys and her grandson were going away and she had no idea of where or to whom they would go. She asked herself, ‘Will they go to nice people who will understand their mischievous ways? Will they be able to tolerate their likes and dislikes? Mind you, they’re not fussy eaters and Archie will keep them in order. He’s a level-headed lad.’
Evelyn was also planning to go away with her two youngsters and at the thought tears welled up in Gran’s eyes, but she managed to pull herself together. She had to stay strong for the children’s sake. At least Hilda and Renee would be staying so she would not be entirely alone. A mass exodus of over 6,000 evacuees from Middlesbrough began on 8 September 1939. Archie, Harry and Jimmy would never forget the feel of the small cardboard boxes that bounced against their legs, and the day they left home with their scant belongings would dwell in their hearts and minds forever.
Before the war broke out, George and I were attending the Settlement House Nursery School where our mother had been working as a voluntary part-time helper for the last year or so. The nursery was in a Victorian town house with massive rooms and large double bay windows that stood behind an elegant wrought-iron gate and ornate railings. Set back behind its low brick wall it faced out onto busy, greycobbled Newport Road, that had been nicknamed Poverty Row at the time of the Depression. The place was once described as an oasis in an urban wilderness.
Our play room had large south-facing windows that let the sun in; the floorboards were kept smooth and highly polished so that we didn’t get splinters. My best friend at the time was a little lad called Eric Ward, the youngest of ten children, who lived in a crowded two-up, two-down, back-to-back terraced house nearby. We played together most of the time and where one was, the other was sure to be found. He had five sisters and two brothers, and his eldest sister Edna was thirty years old by the time he came into the world. Just behind the big house was a long cobbled lane called the Bull Alley that led to a large slaughterhouse and, as the nursery was at the rear of the house, we could not fail to hear the lowing and the clattering of hooves as the cattle were driven down it to their deaths.
We were well cared-for by the nursery assistants – whom we addressed as ‘Lady’ for some reason – and they read lovely stories to us from The Blue Fairy Book and suchlike. Every day after dinner we were tucked up for an hour’s sleep on little canvas beds that could be folded up and stacked away. My favourite assistant was cheerful and pretty sixteen-year-old Kathleen, who laughed a lot and was always singing classical songs. She had a lovely soprano voice that was delicate and high, and she used to sing One Fine Day from Puccini’s opera Madam Butterfly for us. My other favourite was O, My Beloved Father.
In the summer months just before the war, Eric’s fifteen-year-old brother Len, and his mate Bobby, used to come to the nursery play room every day. They would appear just as the Ladies were clearing up the toys and books that we had scattered everywhere. Their excuse was: ‘We have come to take Eric home’; but once there they were in no hurry to leave. Their true motive was to try to get off with the two attractive nursery assistants. Unfortunately, their efforts were of no avail as the girls’ interests lay with older and more ‘mature’ youths.
Separating Russon’s Coal Merchant’s yard from us was a high brick wall, behind which there was stabling for their eight huge draught horses and room for their flat coal carts. The coal deliverymen worked long hours and at the end of the day they would bring the horses and the coal-begrimed rulleys back to this yard to be hosed down. In the summer evenings the coalmen had to walk their horses across the Newport Bridge to the rough, coarse-grassed pastureland on its northern bank. They then had to make the long walk back, as they were not allowed onto the buses in their coal-blackened state and, by the time they’d had a bath and changed their clothes, it could be nine o’clock. To give themselves an earlier finish they were prepared to pay lads, like Len and his mate, four shillings (1.7p) a time to ride the heavy horses over the bridge. Once there they tethered them, left them to feed and ran all the way back to take another one. This arrangement benefited both parties as it gave the boys a bit of extra pocket money and the coalmen had time to go for a drink or to the pictures.
The Settlement was a charitable organisation that had, for fortyseven years, provided a great deal of help to the poor and needy folk of our area, which was officially classified as socially deprived. We, of course, were totally unaware of this; there always seemed to be someone worse off than us and we didn’t think of ourselves as poor, we just didn’t have much money. Our parents were proud and tried their best, saying, ‘If you have love and care you are rich indeed.’
Over the years, hundreds of women had received aid and support here when opportunities for them were extremely rare. Apart from material help, they provided lectures, courses, and books to help them better themselves, raising funds which were used to provide clothing, day-trips and free holidays. The Settlement had set up several youth organisations, ran a thriving cycling club, and Mam and Renee often took part in the concerts they put on. Mam regularly attended the
mothers’ meetings and the Bible-reading classes. Plans were under way to evacuate the children to the safety of the countryside. Mam, who believed in the family as a sustaining force, was concerned for us and the thought of an indefinite separation filled her with horror, therefore she applied for and got the job of assistant cook at the new place.
It was mid-September by the time we caught the rattling motor bus that had the letter ‘O’ on the front. Mam, my little fair-haired brother and I had barely sat down on the hard, upholstered seats before my pal Eric and his mam got on. Getting off at the magnificent town hall we walked to the railway station where we met up with a nursery assistant and a few of the other children. We were so excited, holding hands as we hopped and skipped along, and we were really looking forward to the coming train journey. Mam led us past the sandbagged booking hall and on through the central concourse to the stone-flagged platform. Our voices echoed back from the iron girders and glass panels of the grimy roof that soared above us.
On realising that the carriages were of the non-corridor type, Mam took George, me, Eric and the three other toddlers to the lavatories on the platform. We gaped, wide-eyed with wonder, taking in the sights and strange sounds, but I was rather apprehensive on passing the huge steam locomotive. It reminded me of a fiery dragon resting in its lair, hissing faintly as it slowly breathed in and out. As the fireman opened the door of the firebox, an orange glow illuminated his red, sweating face and the glare of the burning coals reflected back from an array of shiny copper pipes and brass gauges. As he wielded his long-handled shovel to throw coals from the tender into its gaping maw, it seemed to me that he was feeding it. The great shiny beast stood creaking and groaning with pungent fumes rising up as oil came into contact with hot iron. White jets of steam squirted out from cylinders down by its gleaming pistons and the metal rims of its massive wheels reflected the light. The minute droplets of steam that landed on my face were reminiscent of the spindrift on a windy day in summer when Mam had taken us to the water’s edge at Redcar beach. At this point Mam helped us up the steps and into a carriage.