It was unusual to see a black person. If they came in on the boat they kept to where the boat was, the lower parts of North Shields, where the quay is. That's where they went into lodgings. As a child you weren't allowed to go there. Clive Street was terrible, the people living there would frighten you.
Steve Tremeere
Hard to believe, but poor or not, beggars an' all, we all went to Sunday school. It was a sprat to catch a mackerel. You had a stamped card. If you went to school on Sunday, the teacher would stamp it with a star. You had to have so many stars before you qualified to go to the school treat in the summer. Father used to give us whatever he could muster then – generally sixpence. We'd all go down there in Chitty and Mannering's carts, what they used to cart the flour about in. They used to fill them up with us kids and take us all the way up the town to where the mill is, along the river bank there. At the back was all fields, and that'd be where we had the treat – muffins and bits of bread and lumps of seed cake and one thing and another. Then there would be little sports as your ages went up. You got a little memento, and there were little stalls where you could spend your tanner. Farthing worth of dosh – toffee. It used to be wrapped up in newspaper. You could never get it off the paper once she'd wrapped it.
Anne Taylor
If you wanted a doctor you had to go round to one of these church people and get this form to fill in and take that down to the doctor's. Then he pleased himself whether he came or not. No welfare state then. If you hadn't got a ticket and you hadn't got half a crown, he wouldn't come in the house and look at you. The most dangerous things were diphtheria and scarlet fever when we were kids. Everybody had a dose of senna pods or brimstone and treacle every week. Kept you healthy – regular. For colds we used to have to go down to the chemist for two penn'orth of Friar's Balsam, penn'orth of aniseed and a penn'orth of sweet nitre. Father would get a spoonful of sugar and put three drops on it. Two drops for us kids, three for him. Your cold was cured. In the winter he'd get Russian tallow and he used to rub it on our chests, and since our clothes weren't thick, he'd wrap sheets of brown paper round us.
There were children, some was starved. You could see the poor little buggers – they come out with rickets – irons on their legs. Or you might be playing with this girl, same age, and when she got about twelve, you could see it coming, consumption. That was very rife amongst them. Any rate, most kids weren't so big as now, because they never had free milk or anything like that. Half of them never had dinners – but we always got one good one at the weekend.
Billy Brown
On a Saturday night that bedroom window was our look-out. The parents would think we were asleep, but we'd get up there and watch all the old women down there, all chin-wagging. If there was a fight we could watch it in the grand circle without anybody interfering with us. We often got up there in the middle of the night and had a look. There was a big lodging house out the back of us – Irish navvies in it, all sorts while they was building the breakwater. Irish navvies and their women. You should have heard the language of them! No wonder we learnt it when we was little. Drink – fight among theirselves. Then you'd see the old women popping down there every half-hour – sometimes less than that – penn'orth of porter. In the pub at the bottom or else the one over the other side of the road – The Cause Is Altered. They drunk more beer indoors than what the old man drunk outside. Then they used to shout at him because he'd been drinking!
Don Murray
My dad used to do everything wrong. He went with the choir one weekend to a cricket match. He only went as a spectator, but they were a man short so they decided he should keep wicket. He had no flannels and he decided not to take his bowler hat off. Well, the ball came to him and instead of using his hands, he stuck the hat out and the ball shot straight through it. When he came home that night, he stood in the doorway as drunk as he ever could be, with this little lid on top of his broken hat and a lot of sausages hanging out of his coat pocket down one side. He'd bought them for Mum as a gift offering to keep her sweet. She took one look at him and called him a damned fool. He looked at her. ‘What have I done wrong now, my dear?’ he asked. He was a very funny man. He was a very good singer, too. He used to sing in the pubs on the Saturday night. Mum would go down there to listen and when they came home they'd quarrel. I used to lay in my bed shivering, dreading them coming home and quarrelling.
Reece Elliott
In those days we were lucky if we had one pair of boots – no shoes, dear me. Many a time we walked with two odd uns. People who were well off would hoy them out over the wall, we used to get them and pick all the good uns out, you'd be maybe running about with a six and a seven, or maybe a seven and a nine.
My father cut my hair, and you know what he used to cut my hair with? Horse clippers. He was in with the horsekeeper at the pit, who used to give him big combs, when they were too bad for the horses. They had that many teeth broken, they used to give them to my father. You can imagine what that was like, sitting on the bloody cracket, getting your hair cut, all off, little bit top left, aye, the yakkers cut! Just a bit left on top. With the teeth being broken, he must have gone o'er the bugger umpteen times, like a bad cut in a cornfield! I used to be laughing when he was doing us. Sitting there squawking and scringing. My mother, not showing sympathy, would say, ‘Be canny, you bugger, sit still!’ Especially our Lance, he had a cowlick, Father says, ‘I cannot do nowt with this bugger, it'll all have to come off!’
Bessy Ruben
My friend Dinah's mother had a cheese stall down Petticoat Lane every day except Saturdays. I used to go with Dinah to collect this cheese. One day, we dawdled along, taking our time, and we changed dresses, like children do. I put her dress on and she put mine on. Her mother was waiting for us to come back, and when we finally arrived, she mistook me for Dinah and clouted me. I said, ‘I'm not Dinah!’ and she said, ‘Never mind, you're just as bad!’
Tom Kirk
In 1908, my father died. I went to the reception after his funeral, where I was reprimanded by Uncle Harold for kicking a football about the lawn. ‘Tom, please, NOT at a time like this!’ Sadly, I realise that I had seen so little of Father in the preceding year that his death meant little.
Jim Crow
When Mother died, Father got married again, and it was disastrous. She drank like a fish. I remember my father visiting my grandfather at his house in Lincolnshire and bringing the second wife with him. We were in the sitting room, having lunch, when my grandfather turned to my father and said, ‘Jack, I don't think much of your choice.’
Jack Banfield
On the way home from school, one of the routines was to pick up what bits of wood you found along the wharves on the Thames, so that when you got indoors, Mum'd be able to light the fire. When I got in, Mum'd say ‘Your dad's not been in, he must be working. Go round to the wharf and see.’ So we went to where he was working and he'd say, ‘Yes. We're working till seven o'clock. Fetch me a jug of tea.’ So I'd take him a jug of tea and wait outside the back gate. When he'd finished the tea, he'd give me the jug back and there'd be some ripe bananas in it, off one of the ships, for us to have for our tea.
Freda Ruben
I didn't have any new clothes and I used to cry about it. My friends Fanny and Florrie used to go to Petticoat Lane to buy lovely dresses, and I wanted one. My mother said she'd got no money. I cried and cried – but I never got anything. If I wanted a farthing, I used to cry for it and not get it. I remember crying myself sick