1. I am sure that yours is far more important to you and much better than mine because I don't particularly like mine, important though it is to help identify me. I did not choose it nor was I even consulted before it was selected and thrust upon me by parents, mother in particular, who thought it very aristocratic. You see that was very important, to her, when one was no one, came from nowhere, but must aspire to be someone and something. What that someone was or where they were supposed to fit into the order of things, was never clearly defined or backed up by anything, and what is aristocratic about the name STEPHEN; goodness only knows? So now as the direct descendent of aspiring Aristocrats, have I fulfilled their dream or have I, through lack of clearly defined guidance, let them badly and sadly, down?
I think I will let you be the judge of that.
2. My father, to start the process of establishing my aristocracy, was called John: was, because he is no longer with us. He died some time ago in the company of his second wife, who I suppose would be my Step Mother. God help me for I had enough problems with the first and real one.
3. Now, if one is familiar with English History, the name John has been associated and indeed still is associated, with many aristocratic families. So why then and much to my mothers disgust, did all his family call him Jack? Perhaps because they were not aristocratic, knew it and accepted it, who knows? Anyhow Jack or John had a brother and a sister. The brother was reputed to have had some alcohol related problems, while the sister wasn't often discussed because she had been married twice. Depending on ones point of view, I suppose both modes of behaviour could be interpreted as being very aristocratic. Anyhow the brother married a woman of unknown background, unknown to me that is, and they had three daughters. I have fond memories of those girls, as youngsters, but lost contact many years ago. My father's sister had one son to her first husband and a daughter to her second. I knew very little about them, (sadly).
4. My father, aristo-Jack, was born and came from somewhere around the Sunderland/ Durham (U/K) area which is north of where I was born and brought up, but I will come to that later. The vacancy which surrounds his background only comes about because when I lived 'at home,' in my youth, I don't recollect us being very communicative on these issues and many others for that matter, perhaps because they might have undermined the aristocracy bit. Anyhow I do recollect having been told at one time, by someone, who no doubt, according to my mother should have known better, that during the depression period that followed the First World War, you remember, the war to end all wars and to create a world fit for heroes and all to live in, my grandfather came south on one of those Protest Marches, where large groups decided to congregate and march south to descend on Parliament and demand the right to work. Well, as I understood it, the idea was that on each occasion, when the marchers stopped and were housed overnight in the nearest Village or Church Hall or where have you, the following morning, before they resumed, attempts would be made to scour the area and try to find some kind of work. My grandfather found success in a small industrial town called Shipley, in the West Riding of Yorkshire (U/K) and the story goes that my grandmother arrived there sometime later, by train, with her two sons and everything they possessed wrapped in a single blanket. So grandad Joseph and grandma Lizzy (Elizabeth) moved the ancestral home to a rented, terrace house in Shipley.
5. Grandad was a Pitman and not a Miner, as up north Pitmen worked in and went down the Pit where as in the West Riding and other surrounding areas, they were Miners and went down Mines. I never did manage to establish the exact difference but can clearly remember the masses of black and blue scars that seemed to cover the whole of my grandfather's arms, upper body and legs where the wounds, from working in eighteen inch coal seams, using only a pick and shovel as tools, a candle for lighting and the boots, on his feet, to push back the cut coal, had become infected and then healed up full of coal dust. Those and the other scars from being blown up and partially buried and left in mud and water for several days, during the First World War. His
lungs were also badly affected by the gas that was used, by both sides, during that same war and the coal dust, before and after, and of course the Smoking. He was a tough old guy and worked hard, enjoyed his 'Woodbine', cigarettes and his regular pint of ale in the local. No doubt from that, you will guess what happened. He died. Yes, and that despite the fact that he never went back down the mines or pit, after moving to Shipley and made his living, thereafter, with his eldest son, as a Painter and Decorator and a damned good one at that. His demise, according to my mother, who pointed all this out to us at his funeral, was brought about by his Swearing and love of Cigarettes and Beer. It was a combination of all those and the bad living that killed him and I remember trying to work it all out and have often thought about it since, if that were true then why did it say, on his coffin plate,
'AGED 84'
Gran, bless her, lived well on into her nineties.
6. Before we leave Gran ad Grandad and go onto the other side of our arisocratic Family History, there are a couple of small anecdotes that might hold a vital clue.
7. So not too strong a link with the aristocracy there, unless Joseph and Elizabeth hold a clue. Joseph, I would have thought, was perhaps more biblical than anything else and Elizabeth, despite the obvious H M Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain etc, is a bit suspect when everyone preferred to call her Lizzy instead.
8. Gran once told me that after she married, she never worked and that, in itself, is a strong aristocratic trait, but I rather suspect that it was more of a 'Geordie thing,' and came from the old-fashioned attitude that a women's place was in the home, cooking and bringing up the kids.
9. Grandad, on the other hand, once turned up at our home, in the middle of a Sunday afternoon, much the worse for the booze and then having struggled to get into a pair of overalls, proceeded to cut both edges off several rolls of wallpaper, which you had to do in those days. He then boiled up a bucket full of flour paste on the gas stove, again the accepted and standard practice, before completely wallpapering a large room. When finished it was perfect and he cleaned up all the mess. So what you might ask? Nothing, only that he had done the entire job and finished in time to go back to the Pub when it reopened again in the early evening. He was some character and as kids we thought he and Gran were wonderful, but my mother detested them as she detested most people and that was the one and only time, that I recall, that he ever decorated in our house. Drunks were not tolerated in her house. Her story comes later.
10. My father married my mother for reasons never fully disclosed, although there were some family arguments about the time when their Silver Wedding should have been. Certain elements of the family hinting that it was nearer my twenty-sixth birthday than my twenty-fifth, but either way it was close to one of them.
11. They were 'Geordies' and spoke with a distinct accent associated with Tyneside and it was only recently that I discoverd where the actual title of 'Geordie' came from. When Miners went down the Coalmines they took with them safety lamps designed by Humphrey Davy in 1815. But 'Geordies' were Pitmen and went down the Pits and they took a safety lamp designed by George Stephenson, 1781 - 1848 and so to distinguish themselves as the users of Stephenson Lamps adopted or were given the name 'Geordie'.
12. My mother was a twin; she had a twin brother, three other brothers and a sister.
13 Now my knowledge of her family and background is very vague. You see she was the self-elected and self-confessed Aristocrat and would have liked all the rest to have been and would go to great lengths and did her best to demonstrate, that they were, but then had little to do with them in order that they could not undermine or spoil the illusion. In fact she had very little to do with anyone, including her own children, so strong was that and other illusions. But here we are getting a bit in front of ourselves.
So let us back track a little.
14. My mother. Born in Cottingley, Airedale, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, U/K. (I think), in 1910, which means that had she lived she would have been 93 in the year 2003. But she didn't. She died some years ago, don't ask me when, but I think she was in her sixties. A good close family: aren't we?
15. My grandfather, her father, was called Arthur, (King Arthur? - there could be a tie there?) but where he came from I have no idea. All I do know is that when he died two brothers turned up to his funeral that none of his immediate family seemed to know anything about. I don't recall my grandmothers name but she must have had one and I am sure I must have heard it at sometime and then forgotten it. Anyhow the sum total of my knowledge, concerning my mother's mother, is that she died in the same year and just before I was born and that the Salvation Army Band were playing outside the house at the time.
16. The house, that I recall, where they lived, was a large, rambling place on the outskirts of the tiny village of Cottingley (or it was tiny when I knew it) and it was there that my grandfather was the village Shoe Maker. He made and repaired shoes by hand and provided me, as a youth, with several pairs of hand crafted Industrial Clogs that I was obliged to wear to school. Nearly all my recollections of that side of the family come from my younger days so perhaps you will forgive me if they are rather vague and in places lack detail.
17. Pre-school days I would be obliged to trudge miles, with my sister in her Push Chair, across fields and open countryside from the village of Baildon, where I was born and bred and where I then lived, alongside my mother, to visit my grandfather. The only reason we did this, or so I was led to believe, was because if we didn't do it then no one else would. That was not true and I knew it was not but she said it was and no one dare argue with her. If she said black was white, then it was white until she and no one else, changed her mind. When she became a 'medical expert,' she declared that Microbes and not Germs caused disease and so it was Microbes for the rest of her days, not germs!
18. Grandad had a very small shop with a workshop behind, located in the village main street. My most vivid memories of that workshop are the fact that it always smelt strange from the leather that was constantly being soaked in rancid water and the smell from the rabbit muck that spilled out from the cages that were stuffed in every nook and cranny. You see he was a 'Big Man' in the world of Rabbit Breeding and Showing and those that were due to have young were kept in the back workshop where 'an eye could be kept on them.' At all other times they were caged and housed in a very large wooden shed in the grounds of the big house. I seem to rmember that not only did he breed all these rabbits to show, usually at the Bingley Annual Show, but that quite a few ended up as meat and were supplied to others during times of need, such as during the War.
19. The other thing that I recall about that workshop was that whenever we called in, which was every time we went, and he was there, he would greet us with a mouth full of nails and continue to hammer them into whatever footware he was working on, using a large flat file as his hammer. With his mouth full of nails and the very strong Airedale,
Yorkshire accent, my sister and I never understood a single word that he uttered and my mother would have to interpret. However he was always good for sixpence between us (two and a half pence in present day UK currency) and that made him OK as far as we were concerned, as one old penny, in those days, bought a fair sized bag of sweets.
20. You will recall that I specifically mentioned going to visit grandad at the workshop and of him being there. Well, in actual fact, more often than not, he would be missing. The shop would be open but there would be no one about. That's the extent to which people trusted each other in the village and no doubt elsewhere, in those days, but in our case it meant that my mother, with us in tow, would have to make straight for the Working Men's Club or what ever they actually called it, at the other end of the village and dig him out. On each and every occasion that this happened my sister and I were assured that he had only gone there, passing various other establishments, to get change and the fact that his legs often didn't function correctly was down to some obscure complaint, the nature of which was never made clear to us. My mother believed up until the day he died and I'm sure beyond that and probably up until the day she died, that my grandfather did NOT drink or smoke or use bad language. The smoke that we often smelled was attributed, by my mother, to someone else but as for the swearing, well we wouldn't know about that, not understanding a word he said.
21. The big house, on the outskirts of the village, was never locked and it was a rambling and dirty old place. How many of my mother's brothers and sisters were born there or actually lived there, I never knew. All I know is that it smelt damp and the back door needed a good heavy shove to push it open and the front door, to my knowledge, had not been opened in years.
22. Features that I vividly remember were that there was nothing, to speak of, inside the place, as, according to my mother grandad had all he needed. Whether there had ever been more I never found out. Upstairs I remember empty rooms with a large bed, a chair with clothes draped over it and a large polished wardrobe, with the doors always open, and little inside, in only one of them. Under the bed there was a large Bass Drum and a Sword from village carnival days, or so I was told. Throughout the whole house there were only two rooms with carpet squares on the floors, the lounge or parlour, as it was called, and the dining-room/kitchen and there were no curtains up at any of the windows. In the Parlour there was a very large, glass fronted, bookcase, full of dusty books that I never saw opened. But in the cupboard below I was once shown, but not allowed to touch, a crystal set. One of the very first radios ever to be made and no doubt, if it were still around, would be worth an absolute fortune today. On the walls were hung two very large, dark green, oil paintings of goodness knows who or what. (Perhaps our illusive aristocratic ancestors? - No one ever said).
