It was easy to get a job at the pit?
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'Why, it wasn't easy. Tot Elward, he went to the pit. Frankie
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Gillan, he went. Les Rowley, he got a job at the pit, but it was in
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the drawing
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office, he didn't go down. Joe Hart, he was on the dole a bit, then he got a job for Jack Walton and served his time. Peter Wilson, he got a job for Harrison--he was a builder, he belonged South Shields, but he used to do a lot of work down Easington, that way on. John Regan used to work for him, he got Peter started.'
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Did Leo start on the council?
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'No he started for Jack. He started for Jack as well a couple of years after. There wasn't any work in the early Thirties. There was a slump. There was a lot of building started then, slum clearance, about 1935-36, that was when they built all of them down the bottom of the bank. They built all that lot up on the South Side. That's when Pit Street and Dyke Street went, they all went up St Aidan's Crescent, up there.'
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Aunt Margaret passed to go to the Convent?
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'No, your aunt Nora did, she passed, she went to the Convent. Your granddad, think he won some money, he won a ticket or something, a canny bit of money, I think, like a money draw and I think that passed for your aunt Margaret to go to the Convent, so there were two of them there, your aunt Nora and your aunt Margaret. But when they got to be about 16 or 17 they had to go away to place--they had to go and get a job. So they both went down to Blundel Sands, near Liverpool, Wallasey, that way on, to place there. There was a big Catholic family and they used to work there. They used to look after the kids.
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'And then Margaret started nursing. She was down Hartlepool, there was a big hospital down there and then she went down to Leeds, Holbeck, a big hospital there--I think she qualified as a nurse. Then the war broke out and she joined straight up: the Queen Alexandra's Army Nursing Service. She was out in Egypt, Cairo, that way on, then she went to Nairobi. And after the war she got a job with the Allied Control Commission in Germany and then when her time was up there she was a health visitor over at Shotton and she worked there till she took bad.'
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Margaret died in 1965.
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Did you work much in Thornley?
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'We built some beside the “rec”.’ The recreation ground down from Theodore Cottage.
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‘We built about four there, but they knocked them down. They weren't up for very long. I worked on the end one where the Baker's is. You know the bank where you cut through? The baker's is on one side and there's a new house there, on the left, straight opposite Mr Smith's, that one. I worked on that one. Jack Walton built that one for himself and there was only me and him on it, right from the bottom to the top. I was about 16 then, I'd only been at it for a couple of years. And I worked on some at the top. That bungalow, when you go up to Crossways, there's a bungalow there. Me and John Regan built that.'
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The Pictures
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'Oh, I used to go regular. I can remember going on a Saturday afternoon. There used to be a matinee on for kids at the Hippodrome. I can remember going there coming up the street, running like hell--been watching the bloody cowboys!. I can remember seeing the first talkie.
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NEXT: More on the Pictures
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