Transcript of Edward Allan Kirtley talking with his mother, Julia Kirtley (nee Blackett), aged 90: Sunday 13th March 1988 at 11 Cowper Road, Moordown, Bournemouth. (An extract from the original tape of this was broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Tracing Your Roots on 12 Mar 2007)
Allan – What do you remember first of all?
Mum – The first thing I remember is my school days, going to the church. I used to go to the Christian Endeavour – anything to do with the church.
Allan – How old were you then?
Mum – I shouldn’t think I’d be any more than about twelve, if that. I can’t really remember.
Allan – So that would have been before the First World War, around 1909. Can’t you remember when you first started school?
Mum – No. I can’t remember starting school. I can’t even remember going to school.
Allan – Can you remember when the old Queen died? Queen Victoria?
Mum – No. [NB. She had told me on an earlier occasion that she could remember Queen Victoria dying. She would have been about four at the time.] I can remember though my grandmother, my father’s mother. She used to come to our house, the hotel in Staindrop, [i.e. The Wheatsheaf pub.] She always wore a bonnet, and she used to hand her old bonnets, that looked as though they should be on the scrap-heap, to my mother, to do them up. My mother was a very good milliner. She used to come in a pony and trap.
Allan – So she would be Mrs. Blackett? . [Margaret Blackett, nee Marley. She was probably a widow by then.]
Mum – Yes. But my mother’s parents, I don’t remember anything about them.
Allan – Your mother was Irish, wasn’t she?
Mum – Yes. I remember her brothers, because one was in the Carl Rosa opera company, and another one was on the stage. [NB. Descendants of both of them have now been traced.]
Allan – And they were both Kavanaghs.
Mum – Yes.
Allan – You don’t remember whereabouts in Ireland they came from?
Mum – Oh, no.
Allan – What about when you were teaching the piano – you were quite young weren’t you?
Mum – I was teaching when I was about sixteen, and I put two children – they were twins – in for an exam then.
Allan – Who taught you the piano?
Mum – First of all I used to go to a schoolteacher, and she wasn’t very special. I went to her for a time, and then I started to go to a place called Cockfield. I used to walk three miles for my music lesson, up through the woods. She was a marvellous teacher. She didn’t have any degrees, but I went through my first lot of exams with her, and in the meantime I was playing. A man came to ask my father if I would play in the band – they called it a band, not an orchestra – because the man who was their pianist, his boy was dying. And would I go.
Allan – Was that the Staindrop String Band?
Mum – Yes. Well I came home from school, and my father said “You have to go down to the Scarth Memorial Hall tonight for a band practice. They want you to play.” I said “I’m not going.” He said “I’ve told them you will.” I cried and created no end, but of course I had to go, and I enjoyed it. I can always remember the conductor saying “Give me your ‘A’ please, Miss Blackett” while they were tuning up. And of course me being the only female, they made an awful fuss of me. Well that man’s boy died, so he never came back in again. They wanted me to stay on, and I stayed with them the whole time.
Allan – So how long were you with them, then?
Mum – A few years, but I can’t remember exactly. And then I left Staindrop, when my mother left my father.
Allan – What happened then? Tell me about that.
Mum – Well we went to a place called Hesleden, near West Hartlepool, and we lived in my cousin’s furnished house. Her husband was at the war. And we stayed there for a long while, and then there was a house to let unfurnished, so we went to West Hartlepool. And my mother ordered all new furniture and a piano.
Allan – You did tell me how she got the money. Didn’t she….
Mum – She used to wear her money in a flannel belt…
Allan – And she stole all the golden guineas from him when she left, didn’t she?
Mum – She took it all. She took a lot of money, but I don’t know how much. She never told me that. But she bought all these things, and we started a home. Then a year to the day that my mother left my father, he turned up, and wanted to come back to my mother – to that house where she was.
Allan – What about the two hotels he had? I thought he had two hotels in Staindrop.
Mum – Oh, they were got rid of a long time ago. The first hotel…well, Uncle Bert [Thomas Bertie Blackett] and Aunty Stella used to manage this hotel, and every Saturday night my father and mother used to walk down through the village to that pub [The Waterloo – now known as Waterloo Cottages] to collect the week’s takings. Basins of sovereigns they had…I never knew what it was to be poor when I was single…And I never knew what it was to have any money when I was married.
And Uncle Bert, because he was one for the ladies, there was a guest house not far from where he lived, and they used to go down to have musical evenings and that, and he used to go. And he met this girl down there, and in six weeks they were married from first meeting her.
Allan – Was that Aunty Lizzie?
Mum – Yes. And when he said he would bring her to tea, we were all giggling – I was at the giggly stage – because we never knew who he was going to bring home next. (I think you must take after him.) Well, anyhow, he married her. And she wanted them to strike out on their own, and they took another pub, at Hutton Rudby. That’s in Yorkshire somewhere. So they went there. I used to go and stay with them for holidays. So my father got rid of that pub. [The Waterloo.] But what happened in the years after, when my mother left him, I don’t remember what happened.
Allan – Did they have both pubs in Staindrop at the same time?
Mum – Yes.
Allan – So Uncle Bert used to run one, until he gave that up, but what about the other one?
Mum – Well my father, my brother Bob, and myself, lived in the top part of The Wheatsheaf, and Uncle Bert and Aunty Stella lived at The Waterloo.
Allan – So your father wanted to come and live with you and your mother. So what happened to The Wheatsheaf ? Had he got rid of it by then?
Mum – I don’t know. I don’t know what happened to their furniture or anything. My mother suggested that Aunty Stella stay on with him, and then she brought him up for maintenance. He used to bash her around. I used to see him doing it, and I got in front of her and – I’ll always remember this- I said to my father “Don’t hit mother, hit me.”
And when they were at the court, they were asking about the treatment, and I said that I’d seen him strike my mother. And of course he didn’t like me because of that, so that when he went back to my mother, he said that he didn’t want to take me with them. But after that he was all for me really… After that, we got a house of our own down in Blackhall Rocks, near West Harlepool. And I was still living there when I was twenty-one, I remember that because he bought me a bag with a silver chain.
Allan – That would be about when the First World War ended.
Mum – Yes.
Allan – Do you remember anything about the First World War? Can you remember it starting?
Mum – I can remember when it finished. Well it was just when my sister, who died when she was a week off twenty-nine, of TB, because they couldn’t do much for it in those days… And I can remember walking up this road, and there was a school there with a lot of soldiers in it, and they always used to talk to me as I went by. They were so sympathetic with me. I was going up to see to something to do with the death – I don’t know what it was. Because my mother suffered with her legs, you see… Anyway, the night that they declared peace, everybody was dancing in the streets. And I danced as well, and I was late in going home. My mother was terribly strict, but I’ve said thank you in my prayers for my mother because I think it’s been her strict and good bringing up that’s made me more thoughtful for other people. And she only was strict with me because she wanted the best for me. She never thought anybody was good enough, you know, and I always seemed to get somebody that wasn’t too well off.
Allan – So how did you meet my father, then?
Mum – Well I used to go to the dances with some other girls – in Sunderland this was – and one night this fellow was looking at me, and I kept saying to the other girls “Come on, let’s get up quick, before he comes over.” Because he couldn’t dance for toffee, really. And this went on a long time, and in the end he did catch me before I got up, and he wanted to see me home. So he came home, and said would I see him on the Sunday. I said “No. I go to church on Sundays.” He said “Well I’ll go with you.” And he did. Church of England. So he said “What about next weekend?” I said “Oh, I’m going away to my cousin’s.” It was all true. I was going to a place called Annfield Plain. So he said “Oh, my father lives there.” And he would come. So I went to Annfield Plain at these cousins, and stayed, and on the Sunday he turned up. And he only had a bicycle. He didn’t have a car. And he rode all that way.
Allan – How old were you then?
Mum – About twenty-one or twenty-two. I was married when I was twenty-three… We started to go to church at Annfield Plain. We went to his father’s church. He was a preacher, and I went with them all to the Sunday anniversary. And…he just kept coming, and my mother liked him from the beginning, only, I think, because he was older, and it would steady me a bit, because whoever I got, she didn’t like them.
Allan – He was ten years older, wasn’t he.
Mum – Yes.
Allan – And he was a widower, because his wife had died.
Mum – Yes. And she thought a lot of Arthur…What else is there?
Allan – Well, where did you live when you got married?
Mum – In Southwick…No. We lived in Pallion when I was married. We were married from there. He bought a house before we were married…in Millfield.
Allan – And what was he working as at the time?
Mum – A fan engine man at the colliery, but as soon as we were married he was out of work. There was a strike. He was very clever mending watches and that sort of thing, and I don’t know how he got in touch with them, but he used to go right out into the country, staying at farms, and he did their wireless sets, and all sorts of things for money.
Allan – How did he learn how to do that? Perhaps he learned it in the army? He was in the army in the War, wasn’t he?
Mum – Yes, an electrical engineer.
Allan – Do you know where he went? Did he go abroad?
Mum – No…. Gosh, I’ve never thought about these things since. I’ve forgotten about them. I never once thought of your dad as being older, because he wasn’t old in his ways, and he was a wonderful father to Stanley and you. Towards the end, I mean I know he was having an affair with this girl, but I never thought anything about it really, and I wouldn’t have bothered then…I mean I know the Crawfords [Harold Crawford was my father’s boss at the college] liked me, but they rubbed it in to me about him… Because before you were born he was having an affair with this domestic science teacher.
Allan – The same one?
Mum – Yes. And I know after you were born, Stanley took me down the town, and he said “We’ll call and see Dad at the college.” Well they couldn’t find him, because he was with this domestic science teacher. She came to his funeral too, you know. She was nothing to look at. She died leaving thousands. And at Christmas she made him a cake and put on something about “amour”…
Allan – Okay, let’s talk a bit about before you moved to Bournemouth. Why did you leave the northeast?
Mum – We left because he was out of work. And we used to have the Bournemouth Echo sent to us in Sunderland. And I saw in the paper about an electrician wanted, so I said to your dad “Why don’t you go after it?” He said “Oh, it’ll be taken long before I go.” And I said “Right, go and see yourself then.” He didn’t want to, but I persuaded him, and he went there.
Allan – And how old was Stanley then?
Mum – I don’t know… he was a schoolboy. Well anyway, he went to Bournemouth. I didn’t. He stayed with Auntie Belle. And then he wrote to me and said that Arthur was coming home on leave, so would I like to come. So I went, and I stayed at your Auntie Belle’s with him. And then, before long, we bought this bungalow in Upper Parkstone.
Allan – You bought it – you didn’t just rent it?
Mum – We bought it, but your dad wasn’t a businessman at all.
Allan – That’s why I asked you if you bought it. Because when he died you were only renting 115 The Grove.
Mum – We bought the bungalow in Upper Parkstone, and then the flat was to let at the place he was working in Westbourne, so he suggested we go down to this flat. Well he never used to bother to collect the rent, [presumably they had rented out the bungalow, or were selling it on deferred terms], he put it straight away into the agents’ hands. There was nothing to stop him collecting it himself, and this man who was buying the bungalow didn’t have any money, and your dad said he could pay it off so much a … I forget what the arrangement was. The man never paid him a penny, and he wasn’t paying the money into the building society or to the agent. And I went with a friend to see the bungalow and you never saw such a place in your life. There was scribbling all over the walls, and it was in a dreadful state. The people had moved out, and just left it like that. So he let the bungalow go, and didn’t bother to do anything about it. He had no business head at all. But he wouldn’t let me handle anything. I never knew how much money he had a week. So that was that…
Allan – So when did you move to Moordown?
Mum – Well I went to stay at your Auntie Stella’s in Darlington with Stanley. And she had raspberries in the garden, and oh it was lovely. And I used to write home and say “Oh I wish we had a bungalow and this that and the other”, and your dad wasn’t interested. So we were still living in the flat in Westbourne. And there were rats there. I was sitting on the big landing, and there was a studio couch on the landing, and I was knitting. I used to knit a lot then. And a rat jumped down beside me. One night when Stanley woke up, he said “What’s this on my bed?” It was rat droppings. A rat had been on the bed. So I said “I’m not staying up here any longer”, because all the tanks for the three flats were up there. The flat on the first floor was to let, so we moved down there. Well when I went to stay at Auntie Stella’s, and found it was lovely having a garden, and picking all these fruits and suchlike, your dad wasn’t interested.
Allan – But eventually you moved to Moordown.
Mum – Yes. There were two or three houses in The Grove that were empty. And we were still living in Westbourne. He had an old ramshackle car, and he used to travel over to Moordown.
Allan – And you rented that house in The Grove, didn’t you.
Mum – Yes. There were two or three houses empty, but your dad wouldn’t talk about them, and he didn’t speak to me for weeks, because he didn’t want to leave Westbourne. But there was only one house that had a built-in staircase, which I thought was smashing. There was no garage or anything. But I went on so much that in the end we took it. We had a choice of others, all on the same side of The Grove. I always call it where the poorer class live. The other side backs onto the common.
Allan – Yes, they’re the posher houses.
Mum – Well I stayed there until your dad died.
Allan – And after, because I can remember that.
Mum – Well I’ve told you things I thought I’d forgotten…
Allan – What about when you first moved in with dad. Arthur was obviously there as well. How did you get on with a ten year old step-son?
Mum – We didn’t get on at all, because he’d been used to his dad letting him have his own way. I used to play games with him every night . We played ludo, snakes and ladders, all sorts of things. But if he lost, he used to cry. Your dad used to say “Let him win.” I said “No, I won’t. It’s not good for him.” I was doing him more good that way. In fact, when he got older, he said “You know, I was a pig to you, Mum, and you were very good to me.” I was good to him. And my mother thought a lot about him.
Allan – Was Arthur still living at home when Stanley was born?
Mum – Yes, because he told me afterwards he was jealous. And yet, when Stanley was a baby, we didn’t have washing machines or anything like that, and I had a pan of water to do my washing with, and of course – it was a stupid thing to do – I had it on the hearth, and Stanley was crawling round, and he fell in that water. And Arthur pulled him out – he saved his life really. And that’s why they were always very close, Stanley and Arthur. As Arthur got older, we got on very well together really. It only, as he said to me “naturally I was jealous when Stanley was born.” Well you can understand that. I’ve thought many times how I wish I could have times over again, so I could understand people better…
And then, of course, when they came to live with me, when they were both drinking themselves to death, his wife…Phyllis, went up stairs, and she was talking to the soldier’s wife that lived up there, and she said some awful things about me. She said “You know, I was a beautician before I was married.” She was a hairdresser. And she went on and on, and the things she said… And they came in, and they were both tiddly, and I’d found out about the things she’d said about me, and we had high words. And this was about midnight. And I said “well you can get out tomorrow. I’m not having you here any more. Arthur was only paying me £1.50 a week, and nothing for Phyllis. And they left…
Allan – Can we go back again to your very earliest memories. How many brothers and sisters did you have?
Mum – Cissy, Stella and me – three. [Another sister, also called Julia died aged in infancy in 1891].
Allan – And how many brothers?
Mum – Bert, Bob…Well I think there were four, there were seven of us, because one was killed, working in the mine. [John Ralph Blackett. He was killed at Millfield Pit in 1903, aged 16 – see family tree.]
Allan – Was he married?
Mum – No, he was only a boy. Bob remembered more about that. I’ve forgotten about it…But I think there must have been another one that died in childbirth [another Julia, died aged one, see above], because there were always supposed to be seven of us.
Allan – Do you remember when you were all living at home?
Mum – When I was living at home, the sister that had TB – she married.
Allan – What was her name?
Mum – Cissie. Her name was really Louise, but she didn’t like it. When she was a little girl my mother used to say to the others “rock your little sister”, and they got it mixed up with Cissie. And she had a fellow that she was friendly with, and my mother created. She went on so much that my sister left home rather than give this man up. It was funny… my mother was a different class of people to my father. He had more money, but he was more of the horsey type. His sisters used to ride horseback at the races, in riding suits.
Allan – How many brothers and sisters did your father have? Do you remember their names?
Mum – I don’t remember much about them, but I remember they used to ride horseback in their smart uniforms, you know, long skirts, and they always seemed to have plenty of money to play with.
Allan – Were they fairground people?
Mum – Oh no, not by any means. They were farming people. [In fact Ralph Blackett was a coal miner, though he did rise to the rank of Deputy.] But my mother’s people were more refined, snobbish people, if you like… [Interrupted by telephone.]
Allan – That was my cousin Nancy on the phone, wanting to talk to my mother, and also talk about my daughter Emma, who’s staying with her one night next week, while she’s up in Newcastle, looking at the college… Anyway, I suppose when you were very young there were no cars about?
Mum – I can’t remember anything when I was very young.
Allan – Do you remember when you first went on a train? Or when you first went to Bournemouth? That must have been the first long journey you ever made.
Mum – When I went to Bournemouth it was after I was married. Your dad was living with your Auntie Belle.
Allan – That must have been by far the furthest you’d ever been from home.
Mum – I’d never been away from home to go anywhere myself until I was going to be married. And my aunt was going to make my wedding cake. So my mother said “well you’d better go”, and I always remember I was terrified. I don’t know who saw me to the station, but they met me at the other end. I didn’t even know how to get a ticket. Even after I was married, I still used to go to Auntie Stella’s on holiday, and things like that, but your dad always went with me, and he got me the ticket and saw me on to the train.
Allan – And when you went to see your aunt about the wedding cake, was that your father’s sister or your mother’s sister?
Mum – My mother’s sister.
Allan – Where did she live?
Mum – Hesleden, near West Hartlepool.
Allan – Did you have any other aunts and uncles?
Mum – There was an Aunt Julia. She died.
Allan – Was that your mother’s sister again?
Mum – Yes. They were all ladylike, you know. Aunt Maggie, the one who made the cake, she wasn’t so standoffish, and she was more broadminded, because during the War, both her sons were at the War – they were married – but she used to let them bring other soldiers to the house for a musical evening, and there was nothing in it, but my mother thought it was disgusting. And I remember this night, there was going to be a dance and so my mother took me to a shop in West Hartlepool for my first ball gown. It was beautiful. It was white satin, and all round the bottom it was rouged with pink rosebuds. And when I’d been to the dance, after we came home, we went to this cousin’s house, and these soldiers came as well. There was nothing to it, you know really. We were just being sociable. And while we were all talking, a knock came to the door, and it was my mother. And I just upped and jumped over all the feet, and ran out. I was horrified. Of course, they were disgusted with my mother. I’ve never been that, because she was only trying to look after me really.
Allan – You mentioned your cousin, so your aunt had two sons? Did she have any other children?
Mum – She had two daughters and two sons. [In fact Maggie had five children.]
Allan – Did any of them have children? Or did you lose track of them?
Mum – I never knew anything until years and years after, then Auntie Stella wrote and told me that my cousin Mary – she was a good pianist and a music teacher too – had died, and she was going to the funeral. But I’d never been in touch with them, from early days. I don’t know what their surname was. [Mary’s maiden name was Hooker.]
Allan – So if your mother had two sisters living in England, then the family must have come across from Ireland a long, long time before.
Mum – I should think so, but I don’t know.
Allan – And both your mother’s parents were Irish, were they?
Mum – I don’t know anything about my mother’s parents, but they must have been Irish. My mother used to have a basket, and she used to fill it with good things, and I used to take it to one or two houses in the village. But I didn’t know then it was because they were Catholics. She was very good to them.
Allan – She didn’t bring you up a Catholic?
Mum – No, and I never knew that she went to her church at all, until just before she died. Your dad and I went to see her in the hospital, and our vicar from the village had been to see her. And then we went later on, and she said to your dad and I “Well I was christened a Catholic – I want to die a Catholic.” So that night we had to go to the Catholic priest’s house and arrange for her to have a Catholic burial. Apparently she never kept it up because my father’s people were very much against it. But Bob knew more than I did. He said she used to go with Aunt Julia to a service on Sundays. I never knew anything about that.
Allan – And the Aunt Julia that you were named after, do you remember her?
Mum – I remember her very well.
Allan – Where did she live?
Mum – Millfield in Sunderland. Her husband had been married before. [He was John Edwin Hopthrow] He was a model-maker. He used to make models of ships – just one side of it, and a mirror to reflect it. I remember going to see that. She had a daughter who was also a music teacher. She went to a place in London to finish off with her music. My mother paid for it, but she wouldn’t let me go away from home. She didn’t want to lose me, I think.
Allan – You were the youngest child, of course.
Mum – Yes. Anyhow, after Aunt Julia’s husband died, she was very good with a needle, and she took a shop, and she had all sorts of gowns and everything. At one time, Auntie Stella was helping in the shop, and then one time I went in to help on a Saturday. She [Aunt Julia] was there until she died.
Allan – When did she die?
Mum – I don’t know what year.
Allan – Were you married then?
Mum – Yes, I was married when I was helping in the shop.
Allan – Going back to your schooldays, I remember you telling me that Uncle Bob used to try to teach you boxing.
Mum – I used to do that, yes. The things I’ve done…He used to have this electric thing, and he’d put it in a bucket of water, and you had to test yourself to take this thing out of the water. I used to do that as well.
Allan – And it gave you an electric shock.
Mum – Yes. And then he had these things to expand your chest…
Allan – Chest expanders.
Mum – Yes. I did everything he did, really. They say that exercise and things are good for you – it hasn’t done much for me.
Allan – Well you will be ninety-one in September.
Mum – I used to play billiards as well.
Allan – Did your mother know?
Mum – Yes, it was in our house. It was in the hotel. We had the billiard room upstairs. I don’t think I ever ironed it, but your uncle Bob did. I don’t think they do that now with billiard tables, but you ironed it because after it’s been played a lot it gets ruffled. But we had a big iron that your uncle Bob used to use. I used to go up as well when there were teams playing, and do the marking. Auntie Stella never went in for anything like that. She had this boy friend. She was never really very fond of him, but he wouldn’t leave her. And he was in the band I was in. He wasn’t interested in me, but I used to cycle with him – he took me because she wouldn’t go with him. I heard that he’d moved to Moordown [in Bournemouth], and I went to visit them. They lived in Morrdown with his mother-in-law, and then they got a house in Highfield Road. I went there to tea. She was a diabetic. She was very nice, his wife, and she used to be a dairy maid at Raby Castle. I used to play at Raby Castle for the servants’ ball.
[Note by Allan Kirtley. In June 2004, I visited Raby Castle, Staindrop, accompanied by my wife, Rigmor, and my second cousin, John Kavanagh (great-grandson of my mother’s grandfather) and his wife, Pat. In the Barons Hall, is still the Erard grand piano that she would have played there at the servants’ ball before the First World War. I left my details at the castle to be passed on to the head gatekeeper, to see if the band was mentioned in any old records. Shortly afterwards, I had a letter from him, Clifton R. Sutcliffe, telling me that my mother had been his father’s godmother! His father lived next door to my grandparents’ second pub, The Waterloo, and my grandparents had given him, as a small boy, a small “Ushers Whisky” glass, so that he could pretend to have a grown-up drink. We visited Clifton a few months later, and saw the glass. He showed us the Waterloo, which is now known as “Waterloo Cottages.”]
Mum – Aunty Stella told me that there was something on the wall in the castle about a Miss Julia Blackett, she couldn’t remember what it was about. Whether it was about the people who played in the band, I don’t know. [It was not seen on our visit in 2004.] The men in the band had black evening suits, with white fronts, so my mother had a black satin frock made for me, with white lace and a black bow. And on the stage it’s very cold with the draught from the wings, so she got a red cloak, with places to put your arms through, and it had white fur round, and I used to wear that on top of my black. But, you see, when I was playing for ordinary dances, like you do – these hops, you know…
Allan – …or used to...
Mum - …on a Saturday night, your Uncle Bob used to be sat up in the gallery waiting for me when I finished, to take me home. He was so afraid that I’d go off with somebody. It must seem as if I had a very bad reputation, but I hadn’t. I spent my younger days at the church.
Allan – It’s probably though that you were quite young when you were playing in the band. That’s why he was there… So, it was quite a big move to come down to Bournemouth, then, Do you remember when you came down via London, do you remember seeing London for the first time?
Mum – I don’t remember… I’ve been to London to the Wireless Exhibition with your dad.
Allan – When was that?
Mum – After I was married. I didn’t see much of it, because I wasn’t interested in it – just walking round. I know we stayed overnight at the Connaught Hotel.
Allan – The Connaught’s quite an expensive hotel now, I think.
Mum – Whether it was then I don’t know… On the Saturday, it was an ordinary dance. There were only three of us played - this man called Adam Johnson, the one I told you about that lived in Highfield Road, and another, I think it was Fred Etherington…’cause I used to go out with him. And when I was living in Upper Parkstone, Adam Johnson’s wife one night came to see me, and she said “I’ve brought somebody to see you.” And it was this fellow that was in the band. He was married, but not long after that he died. And his father was the bandmaster. But I loved playing with the band because they were all so nice. I learned how to vamp then, you know. I couldn’t do it, but Adam Johnson taught me to vamp in any key, and I wasn’t very good at doing things in six-eight time, and he put me right, and he said “once you get that right, you’ll be all right. And there’s nothing to it, is there?
Allan – Nothing to it at all, no. So when did you leave the band? When you got married?
Mum – I left it before I came to Sunderland. I wasn’t in the band when I knew your dad.
Allan – Was it because you moved, then, perhaps?
Mum – And I didn’t go to dances for a long, long time. I was friendly with Mrs. Mack, because her boy and you went to school together. And when Stanley was on leave, she said to him “I wish you would persuade your mam to go up to the old time dancing.” And he said “I’ll do better than that, I’ll take her.” And he did. And, Mrs. Mack and I went every week after that.
Allan – I remember. You mentioned that when you met my dad, his father was a preacher. Do you remember his father?
Mum – Oh, yes, very well.
Allan – And his mother?
Mum – His stepmother. Their son, John Kirtley, you met him didn’t you.
Allan – Yes. John and Wesley.
Mum – Wesley’s died since.
Allan – Is John dead?
Mum – Yes. They’re both dead.
Allan – That was my father’s two half-brothers. And you remember my grandfather, the preacher.
Mum – I do, because we were very good friends, really. Because I always used to put a bit of powder on – I didn’t use lipstick, put I put powder on, and when I was going this weekend – I wasn’t married then – and we were going to the church, your dad said “you’d better not put any powder on.” I said “I’m going to do just the same as I always do.” And I put it on in front of him. I said “Would you like a bit?” and I powdered his nose. You know he thought a lot about me really. I got on very well with them.
Allan – He would have had quite a few stories to tell. Because he was the one who wrote that life-story thing that Stanley and I’ve got copies of. Did he ever use to talk about things like that?
Mum – Not to me.
Allan – He never talked about the old days?
Mum – Not very much, no. He used to stay at Auntie Belle’s, and when she got full up he used to come and stay with me, but this particular night, this rat jumped down, and he wouldn’t stay any more.
Allan – So by his first marriage he had my father, Auntie Belle and Auntie Betty. Just those three?
Mum - Yes.
Allan – So no other children until he married again, and then he had John and Wesley. And were Auntie Belle and Auntie Betty still living with him when you first knew my father?
Mum – No. Auntie Betty was in a mental home.
Allan – Why was that?
Mum – I don’t know how, but she broke down, and she was in there and your dad told me that before we were married, and he said would I mind if she came and lived with us. It was the only way they could get her out of this place. And I went with him to the Sedgefield mental place, and brought her home, and she lived with us for a time. [So when Mum married Dad, she was taking on not just a husband, but also a ten year old stepson and a sister-in-law with mental problems!]
Allan – That was before she took up nursing.
Mum – Yes, but you see she was never what you’d call particularly bright.
Allan – And did my father ever talk about when he was very young?
Mum – I don’t remember much about it.
Allan – He never used to talk about things like that?
Mum – No, never. He never talked about his [first] wife. I would ask him questions…
Allan – What was her name?
Mum – I think it was Harriett. But I think she was a very nice person. That’s what Auntie Betty used to say. I think she died of TB…
Allan – And my father was working as a winder when you got married.
Mum – Yes, he was a winder.
Allan – But he’d been in the First World War – in the army wasn’t it? The Engineers?
Mum – He’d just come out of the army when I first met him.
Allan – But he never went abroad?
Mum – I can’t remember him being away at that. There were two of them when he came along. I think the fellow that he was with had been in the War as well. He worked in Castletown Colliery, and they palled up. And of course they thought they thought they were going to pal up with my friend and I. She didn’t want them, and neither did I, but your dad wouldn’t leave go of me, and kept on. We were all fine at first – we got on all right, but we used to have these tiffs, through Arthur, and then I packed up and went home, and my mother sent me back. She was really sensible…Oh, I’ve got a lot to be thankful for…
Allan – Did you have a big wedding, with lots of people there?
Mum – Oh no, only my cousin – the one from Annfield Plain, Auntie Belle and Auntie Betty and Auntie Stella, and I was only married in a costume, so there was nothing special. And your dad had bought a house, you see, and we stripped the walls – I helped as well, and Arthur used to come in the evenings, and your dad papered it. So when we were supposed to go away for our honeymoon, we didn’t go for our honeymoon. We went to the station and took the train to Newcastle, and went to see, I think it was “Charlie’s Aunt”. But we never told the others that we hadn’t gone. Well he didn’t have much money to go on a honeymoon. We never had very much.
Allan – Well he had enough to go to the Wireless Exhibition in London, by the sound of it.
Mum – Oh, at the Wireless Exhibition I was bored stiff, because I was always tired to walk around, and I wasn’t very interested, but he liked it, and he went every year. But he wouldn’t do anything I was interested in. You see I was interested in tennis, and one of the wives at the church was learning as well – I wasn’t a good player by any means – but she had a boy Arthur’s age, so we all used to go up between six and seven o’clock in the morning to the tennis court – we had a private one to do with the church – and practise tennis. And then our organist wanted to go away on his holiday, so he said if I teach you to play the organ, will you take it on. So I went a few times, and had a few lessons, but your dad was furious - the first time he ever showed any signs of jealousy. And I had to give it up, because he didn’t like it, and I’d gone to this place at night where this fellow was. The other thing was, during the War [WWII] I was on civil defence, and I used to go on fire-watching. And I went out, but he used to hate it. He didn’t like me going out. People used to have gas masks, and I was on the team that used to go to various places and demonstrate how to use the gas masks. And I’d passed my first-aid, and I’d passed home nursing, so I was on the first-aid post. Then there was a raid one night, and they were bringing wounded in, and I was so brave, I went and hid myself out of the way! Oh, I’ve thought about that many a time…I’d be no good for anything like that. I don’t know where I went, but I got out of the room while they were bandaging this fellow up…
Allan – I remember very little about the War, because I was only two when it finished, but I do remember one of the first words I learned was “convoy”. There was a woman who used to push me in the pushchair, and I used to see the convoys down Castle Lane.
Mum – Oh, yes. She was a nice soul. I can’t remember her name. She had very bad luck, because her husband and her lived in a bungalow down by the riverside, but she used to go and work for a man in The Grove. She used to do a lot for him, really, and he always used to say that he would see that she was all right. But then he got her to give up her bungalow, and go and live in with him to look after him, because he wasn’t very fit. Then he died, and didn’t leave her a penny. I met her once in the café in Moordown, and she said “d’you know, we gave our home up and went there, and my husband has now got angina, and we haven’t anything.”
Allan – Well I just remember the convoys…
Mum – You didn’t like to out with her in the end, because she used to stand and talk to people a lot. And you didn’t like it. And it got so when she came, you used to cry when she wanted to take you out, and she said she didn’t know why, so I apologised…
Allan – The only other thing I remember about the War was that table we had in the dining room. It had a steel top to it, didn’t it.
Mum – Oh, yes. The air raid shelter. [It was called a Morrison shelter.]
Allan – I remember my father taking the steel covering off, and putting it on the shed roof. When would he have done that? As soon as the War was over?
Mum – I don’t remember. I remember the air raid shelter, because when there was a raid I used to take you in there, under the table.
Allan – I’m sure I can sort of remember something like that. How often were the raids? How often did you have to go underneath there?
Mum – Not very often, but it was very good being able to go underneath there.
Allan – Let’s go back a bit further. What about when Arthur went away to sea?
Mum – He wanted to go to sea, and I tried to put him off it, because, for one thing, your dad didn’t have any money to pay for his uniform, and my mother paid for his uniform. Your dad was never able to pay it back to my mother. I don’t know whether she expected it, because she thought a lot about your dad, and she thought a lot about Arthur. She thought a lot about me, and that was why she was so strict with me, because she thought I wouldn’t get in with the right people. When we had that pub in Staindrop, it had a passage right through to the back, to the yard.
Allan – Yes, because that’s the pub that we went into when we went back all those years afterwards. I remember that passage.
Mum – Well that burned down.
Allan – Yes, that was recently, wasn’t it. [It must have been restored, as it was open in 2004. The passage was covered in.]
Mum – Well I don’t know what happened to it after my mother left it. But when we went back, there was someone else living in it. [This would have been around 1962/63.]
Allan – But there was someone there that remembered you, from when he was a very small child, from being a music teacher.
Mum – Anyway, my mother had a pony and trap. She wouldn’t ride in a car, because they’d just come in, you know. So my father wanted a car to go to race meetings…
Allan – Did he have a car?
Mum – Oh yes. Not a special one, but he did have a car, and so he had one of the customers drive him to race meetings. My mother had another man that used to drive her out in the pony and trap. Well I can remember sitting up in the trap with this bonnet on, and handing these things for my mother to renovate.
Allan – What things?
Mum – To renovate hats. She had bonnet sort of hats, and these had feathers on. Well my mother used to get the feathers and hold them over steam, and brought them up. By the time she’d finished and done those hats, they were like new hats. And then this grandmother I suppose - I can’t remember – when the hat was ready she would let her know, and they would come in this pony and trap to collect it.
Allan – And that was your father’s mother? [Margaret, died 1926.]
Mum – My father’s mother. I don’t remember my mother’s parents at all. I remember the three brothers, but not the parents. One of the brothers wasn’t very well off at all. [Joseph Kavanagh.] He lived in Barnard Castle, and my mother practically brought their son up, and he lived with us for a long time. And whenever we went to Barnard Castle market, we would call to see him, but he had a little wife that was sort of dirty – they lived in a slummy place really. And, oh, he could yodel lovely. He had a good voice, but he hadn’t made anything of himself, because his wife more or less dragged him down. But the other two, I don’t know whether they were married. I don’t remember anything about them. [Presumably because they were away touring with the opera company, and around the music halls respectively.]
Allan – But your father had this car that he bought. It must have been quite an early one. This must have been about 1917 or 1918 or something? While the War was on.
Mum – Well, when Auntie Stella was married, my cousin Vera came from Sunderland to be her bridesmaid. And we went to Staindrop for the wedding.
Allan – And who was cousin Vera; whose daughter was she?
Mum – Aunt Julia. She was a music teacher, and she was the last teacher I had before I finished. Well we went into this church for Auntie Stella’s wedding, and when we got in, your Uncle Tony [known as Uncle “Anty”] had forgotten to notify them, and so they couldn’t be married. And we all walked out of church just as if they’d been married. We got into the car, and we went to Ingleton, where Uncle Tony’s home was. They got in touch with the minister there. He couldn’t do very much for us, so he said “you’ll have to go up to Durham Cathedral”. So we had to go right on to Durham Cathedral, and got special permission there, and then we went back again to Ingleton and they got married.
Allan – And that was all on the same day, was it?
Mum – All on the same day. [27 April 1915] Some people might have gone all to pieces, but Auntie Stella saw the funny side of it, and she was very brave, I can remember that very well…
But I always remember, when I went to this aunt of mine at Annfield Plain – that was my father’s sister – when I was coming home with your dad, we got to the station, I think it would be, and I said “well you don’t need to come any further now” because I was frightened of my mother. And we lived up a bridle path, and he said “Oh, I’ll see you along here.” Well we were walking along this bridle path, and up comes your Uncle Tony and Auntie Stella. They’d been somewhere else for the weekend – it was a holiday weekend – and I introduced him, and I said “he’s going now.” And they said “Oh, no, come on up to the house.” I was horrified. They took your dad into the house and my mother took to him straight away. But I’ve always said that it was because he was older, and I would settle down… But I haven’t any regrets for anything. I think I was better off than if I’d married the market gardener, I don’t know. I don’t know where he is now. I made lots of enquiries, mind, because in the end he left the gardening shop [in Bournemouth]. He worked inside, but he used to see to the plants outside. I used to walk down there just to see him. I did that for a long time, but that’s out of my mind now.
Oh, I know. I was at a dinner dance for the Townswomen’s Guild. There was a dinner at a hotel in the town, and the waiter that waited on us, I thought to myself “that’s Ted Duffield.” And I said to him “is your name Duffield”. And he said “No.” It wasn’t him, but it was the image of him. And this particular night, I was presented with a bouquet, as a founder member of the Townswomen’s Guild… But all the people there, I wouldn’t know any of them now. They’ve all died off.
Allan – Gosh, it’s half past four.
Mum – Well you’ve got to know a lot of my history.
Allan – Yeah, got it all down on tape.
[Tape Ends]