|
|
Dick Tuson (1888 – 1943) and Hetty Sykes (1887 – 1965)
A Failsworth Upbringing
Richard Tuson, or Dick as he was always known, was the oldest son of William Tuson, a master clogger who was born in Brindle south of Preston. William moved to Failsworth, situated between Manchester and Oldham, at the end of the 1880s and established a thriving clogging business that evolved into boot and shoe repairs. Over the course of his life he had three wives. The first, Mary Ann Rigby, died of tuberculosis a year after they married. The second, Annie Edmundson, was the mother of his three boys, but died soon after the third birth. The last, Mary Schofield, brought up the three boys and was the only mother that Dick ever knew.
Dick was born at Walton-le-Dale but moved with his parents to Failsworth when he was only a year old and was brought up there. The population of the township at that time was probably of the order of 10,000. It depended for employment on a number of substantial cotton mills and some smaller enterprises such as a tannery, a brewery and engineering workshops. Most of the industries were located close to the banks of the Rochdale canal, which cut through Failsworth and ran parallel to the main road and the railway that both linked Manchester to Oldham. Although the main road was more or less continuously flanked by houses and there were a number of smaller clustered settlements, in Dick’s youth Failsworth was still an area with broad reaches of green farmland. The centre of the township was marked by the famous Failsworth Pole – a traditional totem of the loyalty of the township to the ‘King, the Church and the Glorious Constitution’. Around it were clustered several pubs and the parish church, dedicated to St. John (see photo). The poet Ben Brierley, who made the nearby settlement of Waterhouses famous by writing of it as ‘Daisy Nook’, was born close by.
We know little about Dick’s early days but he grew up with his two brothers Harry and Jim, respectively 15 months and 2½ years younger than him. Apart from playing, and no doubt getting into lots of trouble, they must all have gone to a local school from the age of five until the age of twelve or so. Outside of school the boys would have been familiar with their father’s workshop, with its clogger’s knives, the noises of knocking and scraping, the banter of the men working there, and the pervasive smells of wood, glue and leather. They were probably already involved in helping out at the shop even while scholars, but from the age of thirteen onwards it is likely that they began full-time work as apprentice cloggers and boot repairers. While still in school the three boys would have been well-known in the township because of the prominence of the shop.
Conditions in the cotton industry were difficult from 1891 to 1896 but trade then began to improve and profitability increased. From 1901, as the Edwardian period began, a new phase of cotton mill construction quickly followed; as it turned out this was the last expansion there was to be. It made a substantial impact on Failsworth because several of the older operations were enlarged and five completely new state-of-the-art mills were built. They were the Argyll (117,000 spindles), the Marlborough No. 1 and No. 2 mills (over 240,000 spindles), the Mersey (120,000 spindles) and the Regent mill (60,000 of the more modern ring spindles) [1].
A boom was underway and the population and prosperity of the area increased. Everyone needed either new footwear or t o have their existing footwear repaired and William Tuson, with the assistance of his three boys, was keen to oblige. There would be money to be made out of clogs, boots and shoes for at least for a couple of generations. William had first established his business in Failsworth in 1889 in a shop at 278 Oldham Road, but by 1901 he had opened a second shop at 108 Ashton Road East, eventually taken over and run by Dick’s younger brother, Harry.
Married Life
By 1911 Dick Tuson was courting Hetty Sykes, an attractive farmer’s daughter from Brick Hall farm at Woodhouses, near Daisy Nook and just over a mile from Failsworth (see photo). Hetty used to get about a bit, as it was her job to help her brother Bob deliver milk from a horse-drawn milk float. They would travel round Failsworth and measure the requested amount of milk from a churn into the customer’s own container – these were the days before plastic bottles – they were even the days before glass bottles!
Hetty’s work would have made her well known to the local boys, but Dick, who  was a good-looking young man and enterprising to boot, was the one who caught her eye. They were married in April 1912 at Holy Trinity church on the Newton Heath side of Failsworth when he was 23 and she just 25. Dick left his father’s employ and set up his own boot and shoe repair business about half a mile down the road towards Manchester. The actual address was number 14, Oldham Road (centre of photo) in the locality known as Dob Lane and the family lived on the premises behind and above the shop. It was not the most salubrious of properties and Hetty soon discovered that it was infested with cockroaches. When she asked a neighbour how to get rid of the creatures she was told: “Eh, aw nay bother – thi coom and thi goo”!
Dob Lane was at the Manchester end of Failsworth and may ha ve seemed a good place to set up the new venture because it was close to the new Marlborough mills, built in 1905 and 1908, and there was a thriving workforce in the area. Conveniently for Dick a nearby pub was called ‘The Clogger’s Arms’ (photo) and one wonders if he ever attempted to claim a free pint there.
In good Tuson fashion Dick got started on a family pretty much straight away and just 319 days after the wedding Hetty gave birth to their first child, Nellie (see photo later). She was born at 14, Oldham Road but sadly survived for only 10 months. For some reason at about this time Dick decided to move from Failsworth to Hollinwood, about two miles nearer Oldham and far enough from his father’s and his brother’s shop not to interfere with their trade.
Hollinwood – Business and Family Life
Hollinwood also had its cotton mills and like Failsworth it received a substantial impetus from the Edwardian boom. Several magnificent new mills were built, for example the Durban (120,000 spindles), the Devon (91,000 spindles), the Fox (116,000 spindles) and the Heron (105,000 spindles), and  expansion also took place at many of the older facilities. This all meant lots more feet for the attention of the boot and clog doctor, lots more soles that needed saving, heeling required! In addition Hollinwood also housed substantial numbers of coal miners, and their families, who worked mainly at the Oak Colliery made up of a number of separate working areas, such as the Albert and the Victoria pits.
In this dynamic environment Dick Tuson installed his new business, grandly called the ‘Hollins Boot and Clog Repairing Factory’ (photo). It was located, in fact, in fairly modest single-storey premises at 848, Hollins Road and was probably established in 1914 on the eve of the First World War. Tram lines ran down Hollins Road in front of the shop and frequent trams rattled down hill towards Failsworth and Manchester, or laboured up to Oldham, providing excellent access for customers and easy communication with the neighbouring towns.
It would be easy to by-pass the First World War in an account of Dick Tuson's life, because he did not join the army for reasons of which I am unsure. On the one hand it appears that cloggers were exempted from military service [2] but I also know that Dick suffered from a skin disease called psoriasis and that may have prevented him from signing up.However it seems important to look a little more closely at the context of the times, as explained in the following quotation: "The true character of the war began to emerge in 1915. The Western Front had reached a bloody stalemate. Men were being slaughtered in fruitless ofensives, or else they were being driven out of their wits by living with the unrelenting bombardment and the daily likelihood of a violent death. At home, the lack of resounding victories was demoralising, especially once the economic cost of war began to be felt: petrol rationing, daylight saving, shortages of wool and 'meatless days'. Poster campaigns played on the shame of cowardice an  d girls were encouraged to ask searching questions of their civilian sweethearts: 'Don't I mean enough to you?' 'Don't you love your country?' 'Wouldn't you fight for me?' It was widely reported that women were approaching 'shirkers' on the street and presenting them with a white feather. More commonly young men were taunted by urchins - 'Afraid to join up, then?' Men working in vital war industries became so dispirited that the government was forced to issue them with special badges." [2a]
I do not know how Dick faced this period, or what his experiences of it were. He was not the sort of person to confide in his wife, but it is likely that he would have discussed his thoughts with friends in a similar situation to himself at his pub or club. In any case he became a member of the local Firewatch post, and that is all we know. His two brothers, Harry and Jim, both fought in France; Harry returned safe home but Jim was killed in action in 1918 near Colincamps, north of Albert in Picardy.. It seems that for most of the war, at least, Dick and Hetty were living nearby at 18 Knowl Street as it was there that their children, Mary (named after her step-grandmother) and Irene (meaning ‘Peace’, for which they no doubt longed), were born, respectively in December 1914 and November 1916 (photo).
After the end of the war Dick and Hetty moved to the house at 846 Hollins Road, which adjoined Dick’s business premises, and it was there that Richard, their fourth child, was born in 1920 (photo).
The ‘Hollins Boot and Clog Repairing Factory’ comprised a shop to attend the public at the front (with benches for customers to sit in their socks while waiting for their boots or clogs to be fixed), a small office for administration immediately behind the shop, and a workshop that extended down the right-hand side of the premises to a work area at the rear (see photo). In later years stitching, finishing and polishing machines, mostly manufactured by Keats and Bexsons of Stafford, whirred and clattered away down the right side of the building and in the work area at the rear Dick later installed a great octagonal workbench where up to eight men could knock and bang at their lasts. One of the secrets of Dick’s success appears to have been his willingness to invest in machinery to increase productivity and profitability. Later he bought a van to collect and deliver work, no doubt an innovation in those days.
 Just after the end of the First World War, at the age of two, Irene contracted poliomyelitis and, given that there was no public health service (the NHS began only after 1945) the treatment required, including a big operation, must have placed a significant financial burden on the family, all paid for privately. Dick never stinted, never complained, and neither did Hetty. For many years Hetty had to take Irene by tram twice a week to the Manchester Royal Infirmary for exercise and physiotherapy, and besides the medical bills there were obviously direct travel costs and the cost of arrangements with ‘Mrs. Law’ to look after Mary and Richard while Hetty was away.
After the Armistice was signed and the de-mobbed forces flooded home there must have been hopes of life returning to normal. The well-known photographs of the ‘Hollins Boot and Clog Repairing Factory’ shown above (illustrated in several publications) have a full complement of workers and probably date from after de-mob in about 1919.
In fact civilian life was to become a roller coaster as the British economy struggled to cope with a combination of unusual circumstances. The immediate post-war years, 1918 to 1921, saw the final, deadly, boom in the cotton industry, followed, sadly, by catastrophic and terminal bust as forces that had been building for over one hundred years finally smashed it. The boom that followed the First World War may reasonably be compared to the dot.com boom of recent years. Nowadays it is little known but it was extremely important then and is therefore worth a brief description, much of it based on Law (1999).
Entrepreneurial individuals established most of the early cotton mills (the ‘Privates’) but from the 1860s limited liability companies (the ‘Limiteds’) became the preferred way to finance new ventures in the Oldham area. Shares in these new companies could be bought and sold by the public on local stock exchanges and the Edwardian boom of 1904 to 1908 took place principally among the Limiteds. Following the First World War there was a great air of expectation in the cotton industry as government production restrictions were immediately lifted, mill owners set about resuming full production and a market starved of  cotton goods for four years created strong demand. In addition, much of the competition in continental Europe had been destroyed or disabled, leaving the field pretty much free for the Lancashire mills. It seemed that a time of great prosperity was dawning.
However the cotton workers, hitherto noted for their cooperation with the owners, were becoming more militant as trades unions became stronger and the Labour party began flexing its growing muscles. Profitability in the mills exploded and the employees were determined to have their share of it. Following strike action in cotton, coal and other industries, substantial inflationary wage increases were granted.
Share prices in the Limiteds rose sharply and speculators were quick to seize the opportunity to get rich quick. They started to buy up the shares and such was the level of activity that a new stock exchange was set up in Oldham, with over eighty companies quoted, to handle the numerous transactions. The promoters soon saw that by re-launching (re-floting) the companies with part-paid new shares and more debt on their balance sheets they could make even more money. Many of the Limiteds were given this treatment and a frenzy of share dealing developed. The greed affected everyone from powerful directors of groups of mills through mill workers and their families to those who had nothing directly to do with the cotton industry. Although most people rented their houses at that time, some who were owner-occupiers even re-mortgaged their homes to raise money to play the re-flotation market.
However, the good days did not last. As explained by Law[3] : The re-flotation boom ended in tears. The supposed market conditions that would benefit Oldham were short lived. Immediate post-war shortages were quickly met. In the course of 1920 markets became more difficult, demand slackened, profits shrank, share prices began to fall. Trade collapsed in 1921. Slowly it began to be realized that this was not merely a return to the ups and downs that Oldham had always known but a new situation. The world market had changed; Lancashire, with its huge inflation, had become high cost. Large traditional markets like India and China, many of their mills fitted with … machinery (made in Lancashire), were beginning to supply themselves; Japan, enjoying cheap labour and also the benefits of Lancashire-made machinery and mill practice, was emerging as a formidable low cost competitor, having doubled its capacity since before the war.
So began Lancashire’s agony. There were to be huge consequences for those who owned the industry, the mills of the Limiteds; for those who worked in them and depended on them for their livelihood; and for those who serviced the industry with its capital equipment or supplied its requirements. For Lancashire read Oldham [and for Oldham read Hollinwood and Failsworth]; the decline of cotton, meant the decline of Oldham. People in the town were bewildered ….
Oldham did not mind seeing the mills when ablaze with light morning and evening, their chimneys belching black smoke; what the town did not like were silent mills.
Another aspect of the bust related to the part-paid shares. As things went from bad to worse and the mills ran out of funds, they demanded additional cash from the hapless holders of the partly paid shares, who had little option but to throw good money after bad or go bankrupt, which many did.
Dick and Hetty Tuson’s families had their roots in agriculture, not the cotton industry, and as far as we know, none of them became directly involved in this debacle, but they must have watched with foreboding as the calamity rolled over their communities. Their footwear businesses were undoubtedly severely affected as cotton mills went on to short-time working or closed down. However the difficulties of the cotton industry were only part of a series of wider economic problems that affected the United Kingdom, and indeed the world, at this time. The economic damage to the country, such as the loss of much of its shipping capacity, during the First World War helped destabilize the country's trade, and before a recovery could be made the New York stock market crashed in 1929, ushering in the Great Depression. In the UK the economic crisis came to a head in 1931, when the government collapsed and was eventually replaced by a government of national unity. One of its first acts was to take the UK off the Gold Standard, as a result of which the pound fell in value, but interest rates were able to be reduced. Unemployment, however, initially increased from the already high level of about one million to the crippling level of around three millions before gradually reducing from 1933 onwards. The worst-hit areas of the country were the old industrial heartlands, including the cotton districts of Lancashire. Full employment was only finally achieved at the end of the 1930s once re-armament began, to face up to the growing threat of Germany, and as recruitment for the armed forces resumed. The cotton industry, however, continued to decline and adjust as many overseas countries expanded production at lower cost, and export markets virtually disappeared. Along with much of industrial Lancashire, Failsworth and Hollinwood never recovered from the collapse of the old industries in the 1920s and 1930s and the area continues to struggle to this day. More and more of the cotton spinning rings and mules fell silent and the cotton mills that had been the towns' glory were adapted for somehow less dignified use, or became derelict and were picked off one by one and unceremoniously demolished. The numerous mill chimneystacks that had reached skywards were brought crashing down. Fred Dibnah entered into incongruous and melancholy celebrity. Notwithstanding the multitude of enduring problems, Dick was a good businessman and somehow prospered. He owned his own business premises and also came to own, leasehold, four of the five houses attached to it, lacking only the end house nearest Oldham (photo). He also owned one house across the road from this terrace, and he inherited several cottages in Woodhouses after his father died in 1927. Dick was also a good mechanic. In addition to the machines in his shop he ran a motorbike with a sidecar for Hetty during the early years of his marriage, and soon after traded it in for a car. While her father was alive Irene never remembered the family not having a car. The car allowed the family to make trips to the coast, continuing the practices of William and Mary. They visited Blackpool in 1929  (see photo), and Bridlington in 1931 and 1932, where Dick enjoyed a spot of sea fishing (see photo). Irene also remembered visiting distant relatives at the Bay Horse Hotel, Chorley, going to Colemere near Ellesmere on the Welsh borders (probably to visit relatives of her grandmother Sykes) and to Lake Vyrnwy and Welshpool in Wales itself. There were also visits to Irene’s Uncle Jim Sykes and Aunty Annie at Hindley Green, west of Manchester. On one occasion Irene remembered her father’s car breaking down on one of their longer journeys. She was excited because they had to stay in local accommodation, but to Dick it must have been a real nuisance, involving a long walk alone to seek help, and several bills to pay! There is other evidence of Dick’s continuing prosperity during the 1920’s. For example he installed a telephone in the shop in about 1924 or 1925. Irene remembered calling from Lewis’s department store in Piccadilly, Manchester, on her way home from hospital, just to try out the new ‘phone. Also, in about 1926 the family bought a nice house at 43, Northfield Road in New Moston, about a mile from her father’s business. The house was detached – a huge improvement on the terraced properties they had previously occupied, and had a garden where Hetty could once more indulge her farm-reared green fingers, and a cellar where Dick took to growing mushrooms. There was still plenty of life in the old dog and in 1928 Hetty gave birth to the final member of their family, Margaret. By this time Mary was fourteen, Irene twelve and Richard nearly eight. Dick was enterprising and clearly interested in broadening his business activities. Perhaps in a reaction to the difficult economic conditions that prevailed in the country at that time, in about 1931 he moved the family back from Northfield Road to live at the back of a rented shop at 827 Hollins Road, near to his boot and shoe repairing business. Hetty was not consulted about the move and lamented being deprived of her garden! Once there, Dick put Irene in charge of a sweet, stationery and tobacconist business (see bookmark); he himself was a pipe smoker. About the same time he paid £10 cash to remove Mary from Harpurhey High School f  or Girls, for which she had passed a competitive exam, and put her to work on the counter of the boot and shoe repair business. When Irene told the story years later she was still indignant at the waste of ‘a good brain’! Reflecting on her father, Irene wrote: “Although I never remember getting any affection from my father, he certainly worked hard to provide the family with whatever was needed for our well-being. I never remember any family discussions, because his word was law and we saw little of him because after working long hours and then having a nod in the chair he was washed and out to the Club or Pub. We felt we could relax when he was out for at times I’m afraid we ran rings round our mother but she seldom used the leather strap which hung beside the fire-place. Not that our father ever punished us – we didn’t need it when he was around”.
Dick’s political sympathies were strongly Conservative although he was never an activist and in fact seems to have been somewhat unconvinced by politicians of all persuasions. However on one occasion a Labour supporter opened a grocer’s shop on Hollins Road and Dick told a friend “If you ever see my wife going into that shop, come and tell me!” (So far as we know there was never any need to report her!) Instead of getting involved in politics Dick preferred to spend his time at Working Men’s Clubs such as the Hollinwood Working Men’s Institute, situated in Byron Street (which had a bowling green). After moving to Northfield Road in New Moston he helped found the New Moston Social club in Parkfield Road, which continued at least until 2004.
Dick fulfilled his duties as a husband by taking Hetty to ‘the pictures’ (cinema) each Saturday evening, first show. The cinema was the Queen's, just off Oldham Road, not far from the Roxy (which had not then been built – it was quite an event when the Roxy opened in 1937) [4]. 'The Queen's cinema held second place to the Roxy. Its carpets weren't so plush and its odour was less like perfume... The balcony was a nightmare. Many seats faced forwards at right angles to the screen so you could see a good film but get neck ache as a result.'[5]
Dick used to buy Hetty a quarter pound box of chocolates and then walk well ahead of her all the way home – so he could get out for a drink with his pals without further delay! Dick also bought his wife a sewing machine and Hetty was a useful dressmaker.
 Dick was a good father and among other things wanted the children to learn to swim, although psoriasis prevented him from joining them in the public swimming baths. Neither he nor Hetty attended church on a regular basis, although the children attended Sunday School. Irene, for example, went to St. John’s in Failsworth. Perhaps his interest in spiritual things was satisfied more by membership of Freemasonry; he joined Semper Fidelis lodge, number 3299, in 1928 and became a Mark Mason in 1930 (see record card).
The Second World War happily had no catastrophic impact on Dick and his family. His only son, Richard, was nineteen when the war broke out and was working with hi s father in the boot and shoe repair business. He was soon called up into the army and trained in England until sent to North Africa in 1942 where he was present at El Alamein under Montgomery. Later he was injured in Italy and after recuperation in England fought across Europe and into Germany.
In the meantime Dick’s oldest daughter, Mary, was courting a young man from Clitheroe, Arthur Jones, who she had met via his second cousin, her school friend, Jessie Gent. Arthur was clearly judged to be the ‘right sort of boy’ for he won Dick and Hetty’s approval to marry, the wedding taking place at St. John’s church in April 1941 (photo) just as Arthur was called up for the army, so the couple had to cut short their honeymoon! Mary then left home to accompany Arthur on his posting in Southend-on-Sea where he served as a Lance Sergeant in the Royal Army Service Corps. Irene, on the other hand, stayed at home but had begun courting Leslie Dunkerley, son of the well-known magistrate Billy Dunkerley of Failsworth. They met at St. John’s church and from 1938 were ‘walking out’. They married in February 1942 and lived initially in Failsworth (photo). Thus for the remainder of the war Dick and Hetty were left with just one child, Margaret, living at home. Margaret was only eleven years old when war broke out.
An End Too Soon
While at Northfield Road, Dick became friends with Dr. Freelander at the New Moston Social Club. Other than suffering from psoriasis he seems to have enjoyed good health. However in about 1942 he became unwell and consulted his medical friend who sent him to a specialist. The specialist said he must stop working straight away if he wanted to live and Dick must have been seriously concerned because he took the advice and, as his son Richard was away at war, he closed down the boot and shoe business before Easter 1943 and made his will out on the Maunday Thursday. It was all to no avail, however, for Dick suffered a stroke.
 Much to Hetty’s relief, by this time Dick had moved the family to another house with a garden, at number 34 Montgomery Street, the quiet road opposite his shoe repair shop. After his stroke Dick was confined to bed in the downstairs front room at Montgomery Street, unable to walk, but he would sometimes sit out in the back garden to enjoy the summer weather (see photo). While Irene was sitting next to him at the lunch table on August 16th 1943, home from her work at Ferranti’s, Dick collapsed and died. He was only 55 years old. He would have known he was twice to become a grandfather, but did not live to have the happiness of seeing either of his first two grandhchildren who were both born less than three months after his death.
Dick’s funeral service was at St. John’s, Failsworth. Among the mourners was ‘Uncle James’, an organist who had come from ‘the other side of Manchester’ and who had a daughter called Marjorie. They had a toyshop and Irene remembered visiting them occasionally and staying overnight, sleeping on the floor. For some time I was unsure who this person was, but it now seems certain that it was James Margrove an uncle of Dick's, who had married Isabella Tuson; their daughter, Marjorie, was mentioned in the will of William Tuson (Dick's father). However there was also a mourner named in a newspaper report of the funeral as ‘Mr. H. Tuson (Stockport)’ who I cannot link to the family.
Dick’s funeral reception was unusual in that it was for men only. It took place at the Hollinwood Working Men’s Institute, located in Byron Street, where Dick was a member – his name used to be up on boards on the wall there. Wreaths were sent to the funeral by several organizations in which Dick had participated, amongst them, bizarrely, The White Hart Pig Club [6]!
Dick left his business and the three houses he owned (848, 846 and 844 Hollins Road and adjacent property) to his son who, on his return from the war, re-opened shop as a shoe repair business that remained viable until it was eventually closed and the premises were sold in about 1977.
My Granny
 After Dick died, under the terms of his will Hetty received an income for life from the residue of the estate, that I understand may have included other property. The net value of the estate was £3,017-0s-8d. Hetty's daughter Margaret, who was only thirteen when her father died, always lived with her mother and in time no doubt paid her share of the expenses out of her earnings. It appears that Hetty's finances were always adequate to support the respectable lifestyle she enjoyed.
In later life Hetty suffered badly from arthritis and this no doubt encouraged her to move, together with Margaret, from Montgomery Street to a bungalow that she bought at 3, Chiltern Avenue in Chadderton. The bungalow was sold after Margaret died in 1976, the proceeds being split between Mary, Irene and Richard.
I remember Hetty – Granny to me – as a pleasant lady to be respected with affection but neither loved nor feared. She had sharp eyes, illustrated by the fact that on one occasion when I might have been about ten years old she correctly identified me at a great distance playing in a prohibited place, and when I got home I was in trouble! Granny could certainly have a twinkle in her eye, but when I was young her health was already not good and she moved slowly, usually with the help of either one or two walking sticks. She had long hair that she used to cleverly do up into plaits that were then wound up on her head, and she cooked nice cakes. Irene says that she always enjoyed reading a book and to the end she enjoyed pottering about as best she could in her garden. They said that she had ‘green fingers’, which, as a small boy, slightly puzzled me. I remember her best as shown in the adjacent photo, but I wish I had known her better. She died in 1965 and is buried with Dick and Margaret in Failsworth cemetery. Weighing Things Up As Irene has testified, her father was a hard-working if rather severe man. He  must have been good at his craft, shrewd and an astute businessman. Only these qualities could have allowed him to prosper during the difficult years that affected almost the whole of his time in self-employment. His business was that of providing an essential service, for everyone had to have their boots or shoes repaired sooner or later, and repairs were always cheaper than buying new. Out of his business he was able to raise a family of four children, pay substantial private medical expenses for Irene, run a car - something then quite out of the ordinary - and take the family away on holidays to better-class destinations throughout the difficult times of the 1930s. These were no small achievements. If Dick believed in making all the decisions in the family, and brooking no discussion, he nevertheless obviously cared a great deal about their well-being. Yet he also needed plenty of time in male company - being with his employees in the shop during the day was not enough and he wanted time with people more his own social level at pub or club in the evenings. I never knew my grandfather, but judging from Hetty, who I remember well, he must have been a very solid member of society. He came of a long tradition of social respectability and responsibility - perhaps longer than he knew - and I would have liked to have shared the information on this web-site with him.
Dick and Hetty’s Children Nellie (1913)
Nellie was born in 1913 when the family lived at Dob Lane. She died just less than one year old. Irene said that she died of ‘convulsions’.
Mary (1914-1997)
Mary was the second child and was born in 1914 just after the outbreak of the First World War after the family had moved to 18, Knowl Street, Hollinwood. In practice she grew up as the oldest child in the family and had, no doubt, to ‘educate’ both her father and mother in the art of parenting! From the start she was a pretty girl. Her own education as an infant was probably at St. Margaret’s and it is likely that she then went to junior school at Incline Road, in Hollinwood. She was a bright girl and later won a place at Harpurhey High School for Girls, in North Manchester, later to become North Manchester Grammar School for Girls. However before she could finish her secondary education, her father unceremoniously bought her out of school for £10 and put her to work in his boot and shoe repair shop, serving customers. Thus her potential, perhaps (thought Irene) as a teacher, was nipped in the bud. One should perhaps not think too badly of Dick, her father. At that time a girl would normally work only until she got married, when she would be expected to become a full-time home maker for her  husband. Many fathers could therefore see little point in ‘over-educating’ their daughters when they could be ‘doing something more useful’, such as helping in the family business.
At school Mary became friends with Jessie Gent. The Gent’s owned a jewellers and optician’s shop in Newton Heath, near the traffic lights, and were quite well off. Mr. Gent was good with youngsters and played darts with them on a dartboard he put up at home, and made a putting green in the back garden. Jessie had a second cousin called Arthur Jones, who lived at Clitheroe and Jessie had taken Mary to visit Arthur's family at least as early as 1934. Mary began courting with Arthur before her sister Irene began courting future husband Leslie in 1938. Arthur and Leslie became lifelong friends.
Mary and Arthur were married in April 1941 just as Arthur was called up into the army. In fact, their honeymoon had to be changed at the last minute from the Old England Hotel at Windermere in the Lake District to two nights at Arthur's sister's house! Arthur went first to Aldershot but was then posted to Southend on Sea, where Mary joined him, apparently working at a local shoe shop (again!) and sheltering during bomb scares by hiding under the dining room table!. She returned to Hollinwood for the birth of her first child and eventually went to live at Clitheroe. Arthur, who had become Transport Manager for the RASC in Southend, worked for many years for the local firm of Ribble Cement, eventually rising to the substantial position of Transport Manager. Their first house was at 3, Ribble View. Arthur became an avid freemason, a member of Royal Forest Lodge, number 401 – always spoken as ‘four-nowt-one’, at Waddington, and a gifted organist at Clitheroe Methodist church for over fifty years. He loved the countryside around Clitheroe and nothing pleased him and Mary more than to take friends round and show off the lovely views of Pendle Hill, the River Ribble, the Trough of Bowland, and a thousand little secluded corners. He also took pride in knowing a plethora of local pubs and restaurants where fine homem ade meals could be procured.
In time Arthur and Mary retired to a purpose-built bungalow at 1, The Grove, still in Clitheroe. From there they enjoyed a retirement that featured driving holidays in the UK – Arthur loved to drive – and holidays abroad, to Canada, Norway and Ireland with Irene and Leslie. Arthur’s retirement was cut sadly short when he died unexpectedly, aged 68. Mary continued enjoying her friends and family, and continued holidaying, including visiting Holland and Spain to stay with my wife and me. Eventually she sold the bungalow and moved to sheltered accommodation in Clitheroe, where she died in 1997, a dearly loved mother, Auntie and friend to many.
Mary and Arthur had three children – a boy and two girls, who have all married and brought up families.
Irene (1916-2005)
Irene’s childhood was not always easy, because she suffered from poliomyelitis from the age of two and had to put up with many visits to hospital, operations and other treatment. Her schooling was affected, and she always felt self-conscious about her ‘funny legs’. She adored her older sister, and together they had many happy times together on holidays, as proved by photos that Irene preserved. In 1938 she began ‘courting’ Leslie Dunkerley and the couple married in 1942. They had two children, the second being me, and enjoyed much happiness. Irene had many good and sincere friends throughout her life. Her life story is the subject of the next item in the Tuson section of this website and can be read here.
Richard (b. 1920)
Richard is the last survivor of Dick and Hetty’s children.
Margaret (1928-1976)
Margaret, Irene’s youngest sister, was born on 28th January 1928 at 63 Northfield Road and was ‘weak from the start’. She had whooping cough when she was about one year old and bronchial pneumonia when she was very young.
At some stage, probably in her teens, she was attacked while walking home and this left her traumatized. She was a cheery hard working, independent lady – she worked for a long time in the photographic department at Avros in Chadderton and then worked in various places mostly as a shop assistant and manager. Margaret made some good friends with whom she enjoyed taking holidays, and maintained a great deal of contact with the family - especially Irene and Richard who both lived locally. Margaret always lived with her mother and eventually became in essence her carer, and continued living in the house at Chiltern Avenue, Chadderton, after Hetty died. At that time she had a dog called Rusty. She died in January 1976, aged only 47 years, a lady with plenty of good friends and a dear companion to Irene and Richard, who lived near by.
References and Notes
[1] Gurr D., and J. Hunt, 1998, Third Ed., 'The Cotton Mills of Oldham', Arts and Heritage Publications, Oldham, ISBN 0 902809 46 6.
[2] Dobson, Bob, 1979 ‘Concerning Clogs’, p. 28, The Dalesman Publishing Company Limited, ISBN 0 85203 512 4 [2a] Yesterday's Britain, 1998, pp. 27-28, The Reader's Digest Association, ISBN 0 276 42391 7.
[3] Law, B., 1999, 'Oldham Brave Oldham', Oldham Council, ISBN 0 902809 50 4
[4] The Roxy closed in about 2005 and by 2007 has been demolished. [5] Fidler, J. & D. W. Joynes, 'Old Hollinwood in Pictures: 1849 - 2002, David W. Joynes, ISBN 0-9542176-0-8.
[6] The White Hart was a pub at 489 Hollins Road. Dick must have frequented it. A Pig Club entailed a group of members paying to feed up a pig which could then be slaughtered and divided up for Christmas.
Written by Philip Dunkerley This page was last modified on 28 August 2008
|
|