Journal 5
I called at Brotton house, the home of Mr Chapman, I told him what had occurred. He said “you’re coming back then”, “yes please”, “then come on Monday, will you have a crack at mining", I told him I thought I had seen enough to have a crude idea for a try. “Call at the powder house, get powder and squibs, Hudson will see about gear and a young mate for you".
Frances and I went to her sister Mary’s in N. Ormesby, borrowed a suit of Jack’s pyjamas, a cup of tea and back to the hospital, admitted and sent to bed, was just feeling like sleep when sister said “come on young man, Mister Higham's coming to do your little job at midnight". I walked down to the op theatre with the sister, hadn’t been there long when he arrived with an assistant. I didn’t have gas, ether or chloroform, just a spray, which more or less utterly froze the left side of my face. I was carried back to bed and almost immediately fell asleep. It had been a long tiring day.
Morning, sun shining in the ward, someone tapping my face and saying “come along, are you going to sleep all day, Mister Higham and his assistant, two nurses, bowl, sponge and towel, face washed and dried, then mister Higham examining. “Beautiful extraction, beautiful extraction, usual procedure Sister, bye”, it seems the usual procedure he spoke of was a daily irrigation spray of the eye socket.
I have laughed to myself many times since, about his expressions “beautiful extraction”, it had been no more to him than drawing a tooth. Though to me it was something more far reaching. I hadn’t to do any lifting, straining or reaching for at least three months. That occurred in Jan nineteen twenty seven and broke up the steady regular employment of Tweet and I as miners.
Hospital visits
After completing my attendances at North Ormesby Hospital for irrigation, the surgeon asked me what work I had been doing to cause the loss of an eye. When told it was a war injury, he said write to the pension people and ask for an artificial eye.
Result
Several journeyings back to Newcastle to be matched and fitted. At that time the eyes were made of porcelain and very easily broken. Now however plastic ones, strong and unbreakable. I am wearing one now, that I have had for years and many, many people don't know that it's not real. Such a good match.
Strange Occupation
From that operation in Jan, twenty seven - till commencing an entirely new, and to me a strange occupation, which will take quite a while relating, I was indeed a jack of all trades.
Sept 27th 1978
On being told to take great care of the eye left to me, my wife and I talked things over. She was a great help, never pessimistic or down in the dumps when things weren't going right.
So we decided to once again start on a light fish trade, and improve the greenhouse and garden. We got some white angora rabbits and combed for the wool, and sent it to the mills at Bradford, from where a good price was paid for clean wool. Got going on these jobs and then got another part time one, from an advert in a local paper, I applied for and went to work on my bike, for a printer in Loftus.
Not a big wage but with my army pension, the kipper round and two or three other small chores we managed very nicely, tho' life was still non-stop.
The work at Loftus covered a bill posting round, and the delivery door to door of a free weekly news-sheet, "The Loftus Advertiser".
Friday and Saturday were two days I gave to that job, besides bill posting. My round with "The Advertiser" delivery covered Liverton Mines, Old Liverton, Moorsholm and Danby. Pleasant round when the weather was good, tho' I could get well and truly tired by Sunday.
There, that's that, until August when of those occupational changes occurred.
1927
The summer of nineteen twenty seven was a scorcher, and one I am not likely to forget. After the six or seven months on the bits of work, of which I have just told, I was enquiring about something more stable and secure as a livelihood. Skinningrove Iron works had just relined number four blast furnace and was ready for going into production. I applied for and was taken on as a blast furnace labourer, and to start on the Friday following the lighting up of number four.
How well I remember a blind old lady (Cornish), Mrs. Harris calling on my wife to say some of her family, had seen David (me) with a can and bait tin. Hands raised in horror she said "Mrs. Taylor, I am sorry it should be Friday, for something serious is bound to happen", it did, I had somewhere in the region of five regular and at times too much overtime work. In fact the amount of overtime, I was asked to do, caused me to leave and change my life once again.
Skinningrove, at that period was a thriving place of work. At the sea ward end of the large area taken up by the blast, as it is spoken of, on the cliff-top, above Skinningrove Village was a range of forty coke ovens and a huge chemical plant. The main purpose of the coke oven was to partly consume coal to make coke, needed in the production of pig-iron, and at the same time getting lime, tar, naptha, bensol and a large proportion of a salt fertilizer, exported to Italy and Spain, loading the trucks to go by rail to M'bro docks for shipment, was a heavy job. Each sack in weight being sixteen stone, two and a half pounds. The underlined being the agreed average allowance per sack. This was another job paid by the tonnage loaded. Next inland from the ovens stood a row of calcining kilns and bunkers. The purpose of the kilns was to roast the raw ironstone before going into the blast furnace to smelt over the kilns. When emptying the trucks of stone, a workman wore a self improvised protection for mouth and nostrils, as when the doors underneath the truck were dropped, the heavy stone going into the kiln, forced up a rush of hot air and a choking red dust.
When on this work (fairly often) I wore goggles as well as my gag (so called), around the kilns, and extending to the furnaces themselves is all floored with heavy iron plates, evenly laid together and called the furnace yard. The men employed in pulling the heavy barrows, are either, miner fillers, pulling the calcined ore, or coke runners, the name speaks for itself. They are placed on a hoist - lift - six large barrows at a time and raised above furnace height and tipped into the furnace.
I am speaking of nineteen twenty seven. Today there isn't one of these jobs in being. Everything mechanised and push button. Still the same ingredients, iron ore, limestone, coke and occasional coke breeze (dust), hot blast, from the blast engine house, thro' the twier pipes to the belly of the furnace, in with the raw minerals, out with the molten metal, the bigger the output, the bigger the paypacket.
Blast Furnace man
October 7th 1978
On the Friday morning of my commencing work at Skinningrove I was able to get a bus, in the High Street, which took the six am workers right to the works gate, returning with the men who had just finished night shift, ten pm to six am. At that busy industrial period, the regular convenience of the bus services saved a good deal of time and energy.
On going through the gate, the gateman was issuing time cards to all new starters and explaining the method of using the clock, which when the card was inserted and a handle pressed down, clearly imprinted on the card the time a person clocked in or out.
I remember looking at mine that morning, it showed five forty seven, coming out at two ten pm. We all had to go along to the furnace yard, some having a smoke, and wait of the blast foreman and foreman who put labourers into gangs, instructing them on their work and going round all day seeing things were moving, they joined one another, comparing notebooks and then together walked the full length of the gang of men waiting orders.
I got a brief nod and a smile from both who recognised me, and I them, as they returned Sid Brough, labourers foreman, said "Hello David, got tired of pitwork" and Charlie Longstaff from Saltburn said "No he’s come here to make his fortune" (general laughter) and then to me "you won't want labouring David, waiting the buzzer blowing or standing watching the clock, if Sid’s not watching them, go up those steps and ask for Bill Smith or Jack Robinson the respective charge hands of number one and number two furnaces". These men are known as keepers, experimenting in tapping and stopping a furnace, I didn't know either of them but that of the other two chaps in the two team were very well known to me.
Now another phase commencing as a blast furnace man.
On coming to the pit top on the Monday morning, after obtaining some powder and squibs from the powder store, I was both surprised and please to find an old war pal Will Arnold (tweet), whom I had known since nineteen hundred and eight in junior football. He had enlisted in the Skelton Company of the Fourth York’s (my Mob) and had fortunately come though unhurt. He said Mister Chapman had asked him if he knew David Taylor and to wait on the pit top for me, to go to the bosses cabin below ground, get orders and gear from there and we were to work together. I am not going to dwell on any length of time regarding this part of my life. We worked well together earning about the average wage until another of those happenings which never left me alone for any length of time, occurred. Both of my eyes had again become inflamed and painful.
The doctor sent me immediately to North Ormesby Hospital and from there was sent to an eye specialist, a Mister Higham, he told me that my left eye (the blind one) was in a bad state of mortification and must be extracted quickly or I stood the danger of losing the other. He gave me a letter for N. O. Hospital to get some night wear and get in as soon as possible.
000683
Scraping, Pigs and Sows
After the weeks work I questioned if this was work that I was not going to be able to do, as I mentioned at the beginning of this part, of what a terribly hot August it was, and then standing close up to and walking on the pig iron with a hammer and bar to break it up before it chilled to far.
A blast furnace in going or in those, only needed a team of three, the keeper, the slagger and the helper and a scrapper (me) for two furnaces. My starting work on the hot sand, from which the pigs have been removed, to rake thoroughly and make sure no bits of metal, large or small was left to a depth of about six inches. I was told that if any scrap was left, the next hot running metal coming in contact with a buried cold piece could cause a boil, sending the hot iron up into the air, and very dangerous.
I was the only one for a scrapper, but saw four sides of sand moulding done, four casts of iron, two from each furnace and run into the newly moulded sand that I had prepared for moulding by cleaning carefully for scrap raking level, and spraying with water from a hose. A side of moulding spoken of previously, consisted at that time from fifteen to twenty rows of pigs, about twenty five per row.
The keeper holds a sharp pointed steel bar to the fire - clay tapping - hole. Two of the three of us remaining each used a heavy hammer, and ding, dong, ding, dong, until the bar broke thro the clay into the well of the furnace. That's it, says the keeper, we others stand back, he withdraws the bar and a small trickle of molten metal comes steadily through the clay, gradually increasing as it burns away and getting bigger and travelling as more comes through. The metal down the runner has now come to the furthest sow from the furnace and is turned along by means of a stopper plunged into the running metal and well down into the sand.
000684
The Stopper
I am called away, "David, Jack wants you".
Jack Robinson, the keeper, was standing by the taping hole at the furnace and two labourers had tipped a barrow of fire clay near. "Can you play cricket" asked Jack. "Ball some of that clay up, bigger than a tennis ball", I showed him, "No rather bigger than at first, right let her go" I threw the heavy ball of clay fair into the opening. Jack pushed it in further, into the opening with what he called the tup, rather bigger than a fruit tin, very heavy on the end of a long rod. Many many balls of clay later and the clay had spread all ways in the breast work. Jack told me some would have gone well throu' and adhered to the bricks inside. He said stuck. Now he said "we'll have her stopped, bigger lumps now" the stopper was a flat disc shaped piece of bright steel on a shorter rod, it was crude, but everything in completion was a tradesman’s job, that completed tapping, to all appearances could have been made with a trowel.
In four hours or so it got a hole knocked through it again and stopped again. "There" Jack said "that'll hold a hundred ton, I hope, have you done this work before", he asked, "No" I said. He told me I shaped like an old hand, I could take a shovel now and thro' sand over, the iron just run, it would soon have to be broken, twenty minutes to half an hour after casting in sand moulding, the iron requires breaking or it would be to rigid to break. The slagger and helper with steel soled patterns over their boots or clogs, slagger with a short bar, helper with a hammer, cross the two bottom beds, slagger on the bottom one, helper on the next.
Bar shoved down and under first pig, pig lifted and pushed forward. Both men walking backwards and working in rhythm, after about four pigs parted from the sow, then the slagger with his bar raises the sow, a hefty blow from the helpers breaks a two feet piece of sow clear.
Continuing steadily along about an hour and all is in liftable pigs and sowbits each weighing an average hundred weight.
On that hot August day I scrapped, raked level and watered four sides for moulding, two for each furnace, number one and number two, helped with three casts and at 2 pm went home tired.
Second day Promotion
Next morning Sat:
I was sent up on to the pig beds again, but just to number one furnace only, keeper, Jack Robinson, slagger, Steve Husband, taking my clothes off in the cabin, Jack came in saying “Don’t be long, we want to get on moulding”. Only just turned six am, but looked like being another hot day.
Number one helper, Frank Keen of Brotton was ill, and had sent word he was unable to come to work. I was on my second day there on a step up, scrappy to helper. A good friend that day and by occasionally standing near me advising, so that I kept my end up with Jack and Steve, was Mister Bill Atkinson, shift foreman and father to Alf and Albert of that name, who served in my company overseas and were both blast furnace men.
While moulding my first job was to pick up each single, patten fire the making of the pigs. A three feet piece of heavy oak, four inches wide and three deep, flat on the top, half round underneath, with a flat end to lay sung to the sow and a round nosed end at the other.
By the way I remembered since writing last, that the implement I spoke of as a stopper’s correct name was a shutter. The tool to shut off the flow of iron to each sow. The sow being lifted to prepare for the bed of moulding is carried over the pigs and laid lengthwise, about six inches in front of their round ends.
Steve stood on the lower side of the sow, I had to stand on the completed bed of pigs. Firmly bedded in the sand, rammed down solidly between each two pigs by Jack with his rammer. Working backwards, taking Bills advice, the quicker and cleaner a paten was picked up, the less the danger of the side moulds of the sand beds falling in.
I was not to reach it over to Steve, but to throw it.