Journal 3
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book 3 of the story of my life by David Taylor, miner and jack of all trades.
On ending book 2 at not sixteen years of age, I had been errand boy, shot firers assistant, bricklayers labourer, horse leader driver, brakeman on number two bank, made a hurried change at Lumpsey Mine, Brotton (left with Managers good wishes and told me there would always be a job for me if I came back).
Family
On Friday of last week, the tenth of March I reached my eighty fifth birthday.
My wife who passed away in April last year had just passed her eightieth. She was born at Millom in Cumberland in eighteen ninety eight. Daughter of Thomas Metcalf, gas fitter and plumber on Millom Iron works, she had three brothers and three sisters all of whom predeceased her.
Mary the eldest of whom I shall have occasion to speak of fairly often and being married came to live at North Ormesby, her husband being a blast furnace man at the nearby Cargo Fleet Iron works.
Both Metcalf parents died young and the three younger children made their home with Mary, the eldest sister, Jack at that time was sixteen, Frances who became my wife, thirteen and Tom was ten and had to go to school. William the eldest brother was engaged to be married and employed as a bricklayer on the Millom Steel smelting furnaces, stayed at Millom, married and died at the early age of fifty two. Maggie, the second girl was keeping house for a Mill Overlooker in Blackburn eventually married and died in nineteen forty. The other girl Sarah E, who came in age between William and Jack was apprenticed to dressmaking, but owing to poor eyesight was advised by her doctor to give it up. She came to domestic work at Brotton hospital and as was to have been expected, spent her time off at Mary’s. She married the gardener and lived next door to my parents. She died in nineteen eighteen, while her husband was serving with the artillery in France.
In nineteen twelve when Cissie (Sarah Elizabeth) had got to be cook at the hospital, she obtained work in the kitchen for her sister Frances, (my wife) then fifteen. It was in the summer of that year we became friends and that friendship and marriage lasted nearly sixty five years.
In double harness we had a wonderful time, sharing all, in good times and bad – but always pulled together. Now I think I have made fairly clear the outline of my wife’s people and in the following reading of the episode and happenings of the eventful years of nineteen twenty one to twenty seven, when any of them are mentioned you will have a clear understanding of whom I am speaking.
Skinningrove
Started at Skinningrove next day where the Manager who set me on, said I was much too big a chap to be running around with horses, why not learn timbering, my response “Oh yes please”, from then, till the war, I had a wonderful education among the props and baulks and men as old as my father, who I went home and told him about the change of work. I could sense he was pleased, but he said it’s a heavy job lad, be careful how you lift. I never forgot that advice when lifting a heavy timber. He showed me how to let the knees go slack, bend over, take the load in your arms, steadily straighten the back, then the knees, timber of the shoulder and away you go. Hernia was very common among the timber men, when I told him I was to get a mans rate of pay, he said “believe that when you get it”.
I did, more than top rate drivers and also a thorough insight to mining.
However I am not going to dwell for the time being on that period of my life but would like to write next of a phase, which altered my whole tenor.
Had it not been for what occurred to me between nineteen twenty one and nineteen twenty seven, I don’t think I could be possibly have been writing this diary. I could quite possibly have been blind. Before going on with those six eventful years I must wander a little to the domestic side of my life. It may take quite a while but I think will be worth while or otherwise what has to follow could seem quite muddled and complicated to the reader.
August 1921
The war has been over nearly three years, I was invalided out, wounded twice, gassed twice and suffering from severe shell shock but with an exemplary character, cover my six years service period.
Two years of which was the territorial army, preparing for active service in case of war.
The particular Sunday of which I am thinking now, we had a church parade at Skelton Parish Church, in our new colourful walking out uniforms, I had kept mine on for tea, and after had a walk up the High Street. Church was leaving and I got a first glimpse of Frances and her sister leaving Church. Now that was in nineteen hundred and twelve, and this writing is supposed to be of those six momentous years from nineteen twenty one to twenty seven, wandering again, so I’ll leave it there and come back to it when I return to where I left off at Skinningrove mine……………….
We had a nice little house in Abbey Street my wife and I and little baby daughter Jessie. We were very happy for I was gradually shaking off the shell shocked effect of the war, a nice garden not too far away from home, where I spent most of my time when not at work. I had given up football and cricket but still liked to swim. The Durham and Northumberland coal miners had been out on strike for some weeks, and that had disrupted Cleveland Ore mines. Steady working week, a three day week and three day dole had had quite a run.
Instead of claiming my three days dole per week (fifteen shillings), I had gone into a small line of business which was steadily increasing. In the first place, I sent to Hull for kippers and bloaters, used baskets and did a fair door to door turnover. I could retail kippers from as little as a penny per pair, up to a larger size at three pence, bloaters sold at a penny each. Later I added smoked haddock (fillet and finnan), and white cod fillets all sold at six-pence per pound.
The weekend that commenced the change of our lives and way of living, I had had an extra large supply in the fish run and cleaned out by early Friday afternoon, my wife had gone through to Mary’s upon receipt of a letter that she (Mary) was ill. Tom or Jack used to let us know and they knew I could manage on my own. From my sale of kippers etc. and then this last extra large consignment, I had saved quite a respectable sum of money. Putting a couple of shirts and two or three pairs of socks in a haversack and a carrying mac, I walked to Saltburn and caught the train to Cargo Fleet, then our easiest method of travelling to North Ormesby. Finding Mary much better and all of them surprised and wondering why I had come, knowing that as a rule I should have made it a good chance to get to the garden or go for a swim, after tea I told them I was fed up with the conditions at present, I was going to hike to South Durham to see if I could get a better job. I didn’t get much encouragement from anyone except Frances, who then, as always through life, believed that what I was doing or trying to do was for our betterment.
The following day, just after daybreak, I left N. Ormesby en-route for Durham.
I started at a pace I knew I could keep up and at the same time wouldn’t get me down. My service life had taught me a lot on conserving energy, uphill or down one used the same steady rhythmic tread of three and a half to four miles per hour. I am not going to make a long boring story of all that occurred on that hike. Through Darlington and I came to a village called Hetherington, very familiar to me as we had route marched through it more than once when camped at Hummersnot Park, Darlington, before going overseas.
I called for a pint and a pie at an Inn across the green and surprisedly found the landlady there to be a widow, Mrs Robinson, who for some time before the war had, with her two sons and two daughters, been at the “Royal Hotel” at Brotton. As I turned round from laying mac and haversack on a chair she exclaimed something like “Well I don’t know, come through and get a wash, what on earth are you doing here, have you a bike?”. I said no, I am walking and told her what my purpose was. She didn’t cheer me up any by telling me that everybody there seemed to out of work and if I had a job I had better go back and get it. I had a good wash, a good meal, gratis for which I thanked them, but said I was quite in a position to pay for it at which the younger son offered me some money to help me on my way, being who I am I thanked him kindly but refused. During my journeying I accepted many money gifts and food, but it was from branches of “the discharged soldier and sailors association” or “the comrades”, two bodies which later joined forces and became the “British Legion”, having a members card of the (Dis, S & S. Ass) got me an occasional bed and breakfast at the meagre cost of signing the visitors book, Shildon, Elson, Coundon, Cornforth, Bishop Auckland collieries. Branceforth, Maindforth collieries with coke-oven plants, up the coast and back again ending my pit calls at Shotton, Horden and Blackhall, slept the night in a tent on Blackhall rocks beach, an early morning dip (nude) and set off homeward bound. I think the sum total of my walk amounted to a similar reply all round. “We haven’t got all our own people back yet, but come back in another week or two, we’ll be glad to have you we are always short of stone men”.
Leaving Horden and Blackhall behind I climbed a steep path through a wooded ravine that brought me to the cliff top with the sea to northward on my left-hand, facing me to South east was the Hartlepool lighthouse with just beyond the sun shining on the white front of Seaton Carew.
An hour and a half later I came to the village of Hart and just beyond it a lot of work going on, a deep valley, very like our local Loftus ravine, was being levelled out. A concrete culvert was being constructed for a small river or large streams of water to pass through. A lot of lorries were being filled (shovel work) and then tipped over the culvert to make a new by pass coast road, (learned later) from Hartlepool to Sunderland and then again another of those coincidences which happen in life. On this hike I started by meeting again (Mrs) Robinson at the Inn at Heighington, it ended up by renewing – acquaintance with a former junior subaltern of my company in France.
I walked or slid down a steep soil ramp to a group of Hutments in the bottom. On one of these “clearly of the works” I here goes say, I rapped at the door “come in”, I did and then paused, two voices together in surprise said “Oh hh” another pause and then laughter and then the young fellow put his hand up (don’t tell me, don’t tell me) he said, then I spoke with my hand outstretched, If I’m not greatly mistaken your Mister Battey. Not any more he said, shaking hands, just plain Tom and rang for coffee. He couldn’t remember my name but when I told him it must have all come back like a flash. Corporal Taylor, Kemmel Chateua, Armentierres and a swim in the canal at Pont de Nieppe and wasn’t I B. scared in the glory hole at Kemmel, have another coffee, take a biscuit. Thanks I said but you were very young, just turned eighteen and added two years on, you see. Now what can I do for you.
I had told him the reason for being in Durham and where my home and work was and that I was looking for improvement. “Now look” he said “If you are prepared to sign an agreement as one of the firm’s staff and to travel to where ever they obtain contracts I could fix you up here and now, on a permanent basis as a working foreman to the labourers, but the rank and file all have to be sent from the labour exchanges at Sunderland and Hartlepool. He told me he had some pay packets to make up, so if I would care to go home and think it over, would I excuse him. If I came back Ok and if not he would take it for granted I’d found something better or gone back to my old job. “well good luck laddie” laddie, ah ah, you schoolboy officers.
I headed along the foreshore, tide was out, round to Seaton Carew and from Stockton to N. Ormesby marked my first ride for a long time.
Biking to West Yorkshire
It took a long time to tell of much of my journey. Jesse, Mary’s husband, therefore my brother in law and the worlds greatest pessimist, was going out to work night-shift and I asked him could I borrow his bike in the morning, I’d try West Yorkshire “of course” he said “but I think you’d better to go back to Brotton where you’ve got a job.
Sat morning round about six o’clock, I am bidding to Mary and Frances cheerio at the back yard door in Norcliffe St, N. Ormesby, baby Jessie is still asleep, a beautiful morning, blue sky, puffy white clouds, sun coming up.
By six that evening I had covered nearly eighty miles and accomplished what I had set out to do, I had got a job and a lodge to come back to, when I’d got my working clothes.
Of my journey on a fixed wheel push bike, Steadily away – and on to Stokesley, Thirsk, Easingwold and Tadcaster, here I broke my journey and here found another little kindness and hospitality which seemed to have been with me in all my journeying.
An Inn on the main road appeared very inviting and on entering found two tables of domino players and one or two stood at the bar, farmerish appearance, which in conversation later proved to be right.
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I asked could I have a wash and tidy up as I’d had a long ride since dawn, then I would like a drink, as I had some food with me, asked was I biking and I answered “Yes”, he said “you’d better take your bike round the yard, or it’ll float on a farm wagon and it wouldn’t be the first”. I took it through a door at the side of the pub, though a nice garden and a motherly lady standing in a shed doorway called, “put it in here young chap”. When I took my towel and soap from the haversack she said “now put them back, I’ve laid everything ready for you and some food”. I followed her through into a large kitchen with milk cans and a butter churn, so I judged a small holding must be attached to the Inn. “You can take your shirt off” she said closing the door “nobody will bother you”.
I have often thought of and spoken of that pie many times through life and wondered if, of all the good living I have known before and since, if it hadn’t top priority. Beef, pork, ham, rabbit, lamb, onion and seasoning and a wonderful pastry crust. Set in a corner of the main room a table with a clean cloth, an old fashioned wooden screen shielding two sides, that family sized pie-dish, still half full, plate, knife and fork and a foaming pint of shandy. The landlady showed me through and said “now get cracking” the landlord looked round a few minutes later and said “clean it up if you can, it’ll only get thrown out for ‘tens’. It were left fra last neets supper, we had some folk in, Mrs calls it her economy pie, all t’weeks leavings as a matter of fact”. As you may guess I enjoyed that meal wondering at the same time what it was going to cost me. I had a second drink and when ready went to ask the landlady how much my bill was, she had a good laugh and said “I don’t suppose Joe ull tek out, “Joe t’young fella wants his bill”. He came through into the kitchen, shook my hand, wished me luck and told me to get cracking. Twice that day I’d heard that expression. Having persuaded him to at least take pay for the two drinks and saying I would like the pleasure of calling again in different circumstances, mounted the bike, saddled sore trousers wearing thin, set off for Pontefract.
Standing in the square under a signpost with five roads leading out of town, undecided, a voice, “Well Dave, what are you doing here” from Loftus, worked at Skinningrove pit when I did, Fred Senior, father of a fair number of sons, one of whom Luke (Councillor) has a home named after him in Guisbro. Naturally I told him what my object was and he told me that he and his sons had two good contacts running at Hemsworth. Up that hill, he said, very much like Loftus Bank, over the common and you’re there but I don’t suppose you’ll see anybody till Monday. How wrong can one be. On climbing the hill I came to a village called Ackworth and inquired for the road to Hemsworth Colliery, again assured that I wouldn’t see anyone until Monday, crossed the common by the ever-burning muck stack, two very high head gears over the two shafts. I was on a good road now, used I expected by the many workers employed there, at the higher end of the pit yards were hundreds of empty trucks for the coal, while further down the sidings were a large number of full ones, all named Hemsworth. Even since Fred Senior had used the name in telling me, they were setting men on at Hemsworth. The name itself intrigued me and I felt it was a new name to me. I got off the bike for a look round and it came to me very clearly where I had seen it before. In France when doing orderly corporal duties and taking letters to H Q to be censored before they came to England, that Hemsworth, N. Yorks was one very familiar address, also that Wilf Jackson another corporal who had belonged to North Skelton had told me that, when the war was over, he would have a new home in a new area, as his family had gone to West Yorkshire where his father had applied for and got work as a winding (coal shaft) engineman. I lived with them for a long time. Beyond the full trucks were two battering of coke oven. Full blasé and steam and smoke smothered, on the opposite side, below the offices, lamp cabins, the ambulance station was a fine looking building, very like a new prosperous hotel. When I got off to look at a large gilt-lettered notice board, found it to be the “Featherstone, South Kirby and Hemsworth collieries social club” about which more later. The village the pit stood in, was called Fitzwilliam.
Hemsworth Town being a couple of miles further down the road below the club on one side and the coke ovens on the other, was a humped back bridge spanning the speedy Yorks, Lancs and midlands railway, which at that point cut Fitzwilliam in half. A man standing on the bridge directed me to the bosses houses, a short row of six on the lowside of the railway, he didn’t have much hope saying “most of ‘em’ be golfing s’afternoon, unless it's Elliott, night shift boss at bottom house, he’ll chap to be in bed, an if tha gets him out t’house more like to git thee hair curled nor git a job.
Again how wrong can one be.
I did get him out, by reason of his wife talking to me at the door. He wasn’t at all unkind, told me to go home, get my working clothes and report to Mr. Gilson at the Barnsley Bed, Lamp Cabin on Tuesday morning at half past five.
After leaving Mr Elliott I crossed a bit of wasteland and came to a main road. A little way along where a bye road off this road lead to a bridge over the railway and the pit which was to be my workplace for the next five years.
A sign post at the junction of the two roads read on one side Wakefield, Leeds and Doncaster, on the other Hemsworth, one and three quarters, Barnsley nine. Now I wondered can I find Wilf Jackson and was just about to get on the bike again when I noticed on the corner a new housing estate, several shops and a small snack bar. I got a cup of tea and ate the sandwiches which Mary had put in the haversack, noticing the post office I sent a telegram, simply saying “have got work, coming home for clothes”.
The postmaster a Mister Sutton, an ex pitman with an artificial leg and with whom I got very friendly said “got a job, when do you start, where a you from” I thought inquisitive bloke, but it had been well meant for he got a railway timetable out, and said there’s now’t on the branch lines till afternoon Sunday. Bike to Normanton for about twelve, catch the Liverpool, Leeds to Stockton and your nearly home.
I couldn’t have thanked him enough for where else I could have obtained such useful information I don’t know. “well bye” he said” see you when you come back” he saw me every morning for quite a long time sending my wife, a better income than she had been having and no man to feed and clothe. I had quite a job finding Wilf, but at a corner where I asked if they knew, found I’d arrived Grove Lane, and a nice locality. I was just going to ask a lady shaking a mat if she knew which was Mrs Jackson’s when a voice called “David Taylor, well I’ll be D. What are you doing here” I told him I’d got a job at Hemsworth and wondered if they might put me up for the night. O.K. he says come on in and then quietly, “don’t mention father, I’ll have to tell you later".
His father, he told me while I was in the bath, had been horribly killed at work, about two years back, his clothing it appeared had caught in the rope round the winding drum and he’d gone round it several times and then thrown off into the oil sump below. They never saw him after the accident and his mother hadn’t shaken it off and Wilf said “I don’t suppose she ever will, we were so happy here, all earning good wages".
Coal mining
In all the lengthy period, I stayed with them I never heard him mentioned but a photo on the piano in the room was often quietly looked at by one or another. There were four sons and a daughter, but there was plenty of room, they were big houses built for colliery families and boarders. Wilf was an electrician at S. Kirby colliery, the next Jack, fourteen was on rope haulage at the same pit. Ralph at a racing stable, Laurie at school, Maida a mothers help and engaged to be married.
The following day I left in good time, travelled as directed by Mr Sutton, arrived at Mary’s in time for tea. Frances would go through to Brotton to help me pack, back again to Mary’s next morning – a fast train to Wakefield and a bus ride to Hemsworth. Mrs Jackson had bought me two pairs of Bannouers (strong material shorts with reinforced kneepads for getting down to what I learned when I got going was known as –cutting under - which required full time kneeling), also a Dudley to carry a half gallon of drink, with a strap to carry it over the shoulders, which I did away with in quick style. I found that a quart wine bottle in my pocket carried enough or more that I needed and much easier than the heavy cowboy like canteen around my neck, she had also got me a snap tin to contain a little food for half way through a workday.
Snap tin “well shall us have snaps” West Yorkshire expression for shall we feed.
In different places of work or abode, I have heard lunch, bait, snaps, scran, scoff, tommy and several other names in other places, given to that bit of food that broke the day in two, in the Dales it was grub.
Mrs Jackson told me I need not be afraid of being late for work as she and Maida used the same room and took turns in getting up at four to light the fire and get the kettle on, frying and toast were all done over the open fire, a massive old fashioned side-ways boiler (no tap, ladling can), pans hanging in the chimney back and Mrs Jackson refused to change to new fangled ideas and by the food I got while there and the goodly table kept, there was no need for chat when we were all sat at the same table.
There were seven busy people around that table.
The following morning Wilf called me just after four, to leave at five and walk the two miles to the pit to meet the under manager.
“Hullo and good morning” says he cheerfully, “Name” – Taylor, “Age” - twenty eight.
“Get your lamp one-seventy-eight, cabin along there, go up on to’t top and sit down, find somebody to talk to, tell em your in’t Barnsla bed seam, you won’t get down till’lt buzzer blows at six. Chaps at bottom ‘ll put tha reight. So long an good coaling”
As the buzzer blew for six everybody started to move, I got among them and moved around to the side where they where getting in the cages, quite a few spoke making me feel more at ease, some just hullo, others “new starter?” an one or two said “going coaling”, I told them I wouldn’t know till I got down, quite a few wished me good coaling, seemed to be a regular greeting. In to the cage and down, terrific speed, terrific depth , after Cleveland’s shallow depths, out of the cage and two deputies calling “get em up” and frisking every worker for matches. My man looked keenly at me, “new starter” says he, “Name of Taylor” I said, Ha he laughed “bets been a soldier, along that right hand road, ask for George Garforth he’s expecting tha” further along I asked for Mr Garforth and a voice from a man in a sort of cubby hole, to the side of the double line of rails for the tub run, called “ there’s no Mesters down here lad, I’m Garforth, foreman George, What’s thine” “David” I said, answer “you’ll be lucky, it’ll be more like Dave or Dai, I’m thinking” looking at some papers he said “You’ll be David Taylor then, who are you staying with?” I gave him all particulars and then he said “here’s the nasty one but its got to be asked, who’s thee next of kin in case of a fatal accident and compensation” I gave him the wife’s name and address and he said “ What’s made you leave a nice part like that, I go to Redcar for Whitsun meeting (racing) wouldn’t mind living there or Saltburn when I retire, four years yet tho, well look go round that right hand corner and you’ll find blokes sitting about waiting for fillers and ask for Walt Langley. Coming to the men waiting I ask for him and an elderly man with a very young lad both said “he sits reight at bottom” so as I went down a quite steep slope, I called the name, a voice well away “Garforth’ll keep tha calling all day”, but when I got to where the call was from he held his lamp up, looked at me, flopped down again, shoved his cap back and had quite a laugh. I couldn’t see the joke, till he turned to his mate and said “Luke, ah’were telling thae of a likely looking lad ah’sent to awd Elliott’s Saturday afternoon, looks like it wasn’t Elliot he were looking for, it were Walt Langley and Luke Pearson, over eighteen hundred blokes here and he had to choose us, we must a backed a winner this time.” The other fillers name, as he put me wise to things as we went along, was Joe Mac’Intyre, a real scot, the underlined on the previous page was how Joe expressed it, or sometimes “listen Dai while I give you the Dope”. I found everything much lighter than the Ironstone pits but the work was faster, I had carried two small pick blades as we came in, Luke had eight threaded on a cord over his shoulder and when Walt brought four light springy handles and showed me how to attach them so that it didn’t come off when cutting coal. We had rather more than four feet six of coal height, so it wasn’t a back braking seam like the narrower ones. We hadn’t been hacking away long when a rumbling noise came nearer, from pit experience I knew it to be running tubs. Walt said have a look up’t gate Dai an meet our driver.
Going out bye, fifty yards or so I met a pony pulling rather more than twenty empty tubs for our use. He, the driver had spragged the wheels of the last two tubs all the couplings were pulled tight and when he gave a shrill whistle the pony stopped. The driver came down along side the tubs, looked at me and said “Hello, new starter, what’s thee handle” I told him and he was one of a very few who called me David. He shook hands saying “hope we’ll be friends, I’m Sid Womersly, play rugger for Kinsley, tha’ll et to come an see us when tha’s settled.
I did and we became friendly. “Nah” he said “them lot (the tubs) want turning ower int gate-side clear of bringing full un’s owt past em” I told him I knew, what broadsiding meant, I’d done it back home. “Reight” he said “get em full, a’hm paid by numbers.
I learnt later that pony drivers had two choices, to be paid by the day or so much per score for full tubs pulled out on to the main rope haulage way, the keen lads took the last offer, and Walt told me, they were the ones who never kept the colliers waiting. They always tipped Sid a pound weekly. ‘ Gate’ the name given to the long straight way from the ropeway to the coal face, as soon as he had taken his pony away, I started laying old broken pieces of timer along side the rail and turning the empty tubs over them well clear of the rails. Then I saw all three lamps of my mates on the flat sheet where the gate reached the coal face. Joe came running up shouting “Dia, Dia , what ‘n’ ells you doing” I thought , now have I done something wrong for a start. He explained, one bloke mustn’t so a two bloke job or t’union ‘ll be after tha. After the heavy tubs used for Ironstone, these smaller, lightweight tubs which without much exertion I could turn over single handed, hadn’t to be. So we both set to and turned them all over on their sides. When I went back up the gate to bring the farthest two tubs downwards the face he said “has tha been coaling afore” “no” says I “well how’d tha know which tubs to start of” “Joe” I said “have you never heard of commonsense” “no” he said “what’s that got to do wi coaling”. He was that sort laughter, from the face where deputy Garforth on his round had joined our mates. They all squatted and conversation started, a matter of rapid fire barrages of questions and me answering. I was with Walt and Luke almost a year when one pay-day when sharing out the money I said to Walt “I’m not asking you for any more money Walt, but what’s my best move for improving my wages” “have a talk wi Garforth” he said, we’ll be sorry to lose you but we don’t share more than two to one pay note after paying trammers money out
Frances & Jessie move
It was about his time when Mrs Jackson asked me, would I like to have Frances and baby Jessie come and stay a week or more, as Ralph and Laurie were going to camp with the scouts, and their room would be to spare. Naturally I was more than pleased and more so still, when she said “may I have the pleasure of writing to invite her” As I was at work when they would arrive in Wakefield, Mrs Jackson and Maida went to meet them, leaving dinner in the oven for Wilf, Jack and I. Half past four to five they arrived, Wilf had set tea and after introductions – it was a matter of which of them could have Jessie. She was not shy and was shaping up nicely in talking. Mrs Jackson told Frances don’t be hasty in making your mind up about coming here to settle, I’ve never liked it after Skelton and district and never will, tho I expect I shall have to stay, it’s where our livelihood lies.
I had my name down for a colliery house for some time, as quite a lot were being built a little way from the pit, a part called Newstead, where we eventually settled for two or three years, when Frances having rheumatic fever was told by both doctors., that to get better again she must as soon a possible go back to a more open and bracing atmosphere. As all coal field areas were heavy and depressing, she was very weak and crippled, so I wrote home and got a wire back. Bring her home, We’ll have all really parted again. What a life, my parents, brother and sister nursed her wonderfully and just before Xmas had got a house for her and so I took the furniture through, spent a few days straightening up and then back to lodgings again. Mrs Jackson couldn’t take me as Maida had married and the two younger lads were bed seteeing in the parlour, about my work – I didn’t feel like leaving as I had improved my pay packet and being ambitious by nature was shaping for further advancement.