IN A NUTSHELL

1922 - 1940

by CHARLES ELLIS

PART TWO:

PAGE ONE | PAGE TWO

The following account forms part of the collection of literature available in Pontefract Museum.

As I was getting older I had certain chores to do like sweeping the yard, swilling the paving stones outside the front door, or running to town for 3d of bacon bits, 1lb of broken biscuits or 1lb of tripe and cow heel, all going cheap. Once or twice a week I would run an errand for an old lady next door who she lived on her own. Mrs Walker was her name, and on my return my reward would be a thick slice of bread and butter smothered in treacle - I mean treacle not golden syrup! Sometimes it would be a crust, and what is better than a homemade crust? As she got more infirm I did more errands for her and even after starting work the reward was always the same.

I was getting older now, thirteen years of age and not doing badly at school. I was in class 4a and had many friends there. I still led an unhappy life at home, the rows continued non-stop - roll on my 18th birthday. The abject poverty really got to me and it was heartbreaking to see the misery on peoples faces. Men out of work would congregate on street corners sharing a cigarette, flat cap and muffler being worn, any good clothing they had would have been in the porn shop months ago and would be lost now as the pledge only lasted six months.

1935 was the occasion of the King and Queens Silver Jubilee. Children from all the schools in the area were gathered at the racecourse for this celebration. We had roundabouts, swings, a comic show, a bank book with a shilling entered in it and a mug complete with a picture of the King and Queen. We all had a bag of food, apple, orange, crisps and sweets, it really was a great day, the weather was wonderful and also the people who gave us such a treat.

Every penny I could earn had to be taken home. Cyril Gill and I had another way of making money at Pontefract Golf Club. We would look for lost golf balls and any we found would be returned to the clubhouse for which we would get 3d for each ball, yes three whole pennies!

When we could get away from the chores at home, my friends Cyril, Charlie Hill, Billy Burgess, Tommy Maddem, and Owen Oates, to name a few, would roam far and wide through the countryside with nothing in our pockets but fluff. It was at this time that the above friends made a verbal pact that at eighteen years of age we would leave the squalor and poverty of our existence and travel south, or join the forces. As it happened we had no choice as the war intervened with our plans. The government soon found money for that and full employment. Anyway I digress, that was to be later.

Two more friends joined the pact, two brothers, George and Ernest Palfreyman. Of this pact three died in the coming war.

I left school at the age of fourteen in 1936 and in those days you left on your birthday. I was still in short trousers and as I was to begin work on Monday, it was embarrassing to say the least. Grandma, from somewhere, got some long trousers and cut them down to fit me, hey presto, a man.

I had answered an advert for a school leaver to work in a fish and chip shop two weeks prior to leaving school. I was to be employed at the Town Hall Fisheries run by Mr. Moran at seven shillings a week. Hours were 8-1pm or 2-6pm, with free fish and chips, regular meals again. I was happy to be earning money and it was sorely needed at home. I got sixpence pocket money and I felt rich, though the work was laborious. I had to get ready three dustbins full of potatoes each day, a machine took most of the skins off in a fashion, then every potato had to be inspected for eyes and flaws. Later I had some good luck when the man who delivered the potatoes told me that if I folded the sacks neatly ready for collection, he would give me a sixpence - cor what a turn up. I think he took pity on me as they would have been folded anyway.

At dinnertime I would go into the shop for my free meal, I had the chips and took the fish home. The sixpence for folding the bags I kept myself, I felt guilty, but what the hell. Now I was able to go to the Crescent Cinema using my ill-gotten gains. The seats were 9d, it was very posh, there was a man on the door resplendent in a uniform who looked like a soldier. When I entered it smelled very nice, a girl with a torch walking backward showed me to my seat. The next thrill was the organ coming up out of the pit. I enjoyed my night and even had 2d left for an ice cream during the interval, that was the second ice cream I’d ever had. This time I saw a grown up picture, not Tom Mix or Roy Rodgers.

My friends who had left school some time before me were in secure jobs working on the surface at the Prince of Wales Colliery. Jobs were still hard to get, I tried and failed at the pit. A few weeks later I was offered a job at Ackton Hall Colliery in Featherstone, I did not know it then but apart from six years in the army it was to be my job for life, forty years to be exact. There were no baths there even after the war and travelling home looking like Al Jolson every day was a bit of a bind. I didn’t like the dirty noisy job at first, but meeting good mates and earning better money to take home made everything worthwhile. Nine hours each day for eleven shillings a week. I was even more determined to honour the pact and leave the soul destroying place.

Every day I would be up at five, spend nine hours at work, return home for a wash in the sink, have a bit of dinner and it would then be four o’ clock. I was so tired after dinner and would go to bed and stay there until it was time for work the next day. I still found time some days to sit with grandma, or run errands for our neighbour Mrs Walker. This life was to carry on in the same theme for the next two or three years.

All us lads met most evenings and talked about our future, it was going to be very difficult to leave this life for one better. Help was at hand as war clouds were in the air and that gave us all a way out. We knew some of us may not return, three did not in fact, but it did not deter us from our aim.

I have never mentioned girls and when I was seventeen and girls had been invented, life seemed to be for living again. The lads would gather outside the various liquorice works, Dunhills, Wilkinsons, Robinsons, Wordsworths and Ewbanks and wait for the girls coming out of work. We often got some Spanish, maybe a date, all good clean fun.

I had by now got a bicycle from Halfords in Pontefract. I was never off that bike as it gave me a sense of freedom. I met and chattered to a few girls including the girl who would later become my wife, but some time would elapse before that happy event.

The climax would be Saturday night at the flicks and with four cinemas we had a great choice, and with the girl of your choice. Sunday night was monkey parade night and all cinemas would be closed. Boys would parade in pairs, girls also, all along Market Place and Ropergate, in shop doorways, until some zealous policeman would move us on. Before the night was out, and in 1937-8 night was until ten o’clock, most boys and girls would have paired off and gone for a walk, no hanky panky in those days, all very innocent. If money ran to it, us lads, very bravely, would go in the Bluebell Inn and buy half a pint of mild for 2 1/2d, after all we were just being boys.

1938 came with Chamberlains piece of paper being waved on the wind and we carried on with our dull lives except for the welcome break at the weekends. Both boys and girls were working for peanuts, just existing. The pact members discussed our future and decided that in 1940 when I was eighteen we would all enlist in the forces, the others, Cyril Gill, Tom Madden, Billy Burgess and the two Palfreyman brothers would already be nineteen. Charlie Hill jumped the gun and joined the Territorial Army at the drill hall, if war did break Charlie would have to go at once. I did a brave thing one day and told my mother I was joining the army when I was eighteen but when I got up off the floor I took that for a no.

September the third came and war had been declared that morning. Life carried on as before but with a difference, as people were getting jobs with the powers that be spending money that they didn’t have before war came. At this time a travelling fair was in the fairground and because of a government act, it couldn’t move away, it was very good for us lads and lasses. We didn’t have the money to spend on rides, but it opened each Friday and made a great gathering place for us. By this time Tom Madden had left to join the Guards, yes Tom was in the Coldstream Guards, a Tanshelf lad, sadly we were to see Tom no more as he was killed in 1944 in Burma. The two Palfreyman brothers left to join the army in January 1940 and George was killed in Italy in the same area of front I was in, also in 1944. Earnest died in Belgium in 1940. Cyril and Billy couldn’t leave the pit because it was classed as war work. The government found some more money and gave us a rise at the pits called war addition for cost of living, very welcome it was too. A cost of living rise would have helped those men in 1930 too.

In Tanshelf there were now no miners hanging about on the street corners looking abject and miserable, they were all back at work as the country needed coal. I still went to see our neighbour, ran errands for her and had a chat, the air raid sirens scared her. Trips to town with grandma late at night were very difficult because of the blackout. Other nights I would go in and see her sat in a wooden rocker in the firelight with a shawl around her shoulders just daydreaming, we would end up with cocoa and our favourite biscuit. When I did leave to go into the army, she was sad but there were no tears, she just said be a good lad. I was not to see grandma ever again as she died in July 1944 while I was serving in Italy. Mail didn’t get through to us very often and it was September before I knew. A few weeks before she died I wrote to her and sent her a poem I had written, Uncle Bill told me it was buried with her, I still remember it now, fifty five years later.

There is a lady sweet and old,
Eyes of blue and heart of gold.
Of her I sit and dream all day,
It is for her that I pray.
Long nights I’ve sat with her alone,
And all my childhood sins atone.
My memories of her never wonder,
My love for her is ever stronger.
Her only wish is for the day,
When once again I’m home to stay.
To sit and talk with one another,
With my sweetest, dearest, Grandmother.

Not a masterpiece of prose, but very feeling at the time of writing.

Uncle Cliff had been called up into the army leaving like many others, a wife and two children to be brought up. Cliff was now captured in Crete and spent three and a half years as a prisoner of war.Cyril, Billy and I were spending time cycling through the countryside, visiting the fairground at weekends, out with the girls on Sunday nights, life rolled on in the same old way, nothing exciting. We were much better off than we used to be, we had bikes, pocket money and good health, but the pact was not being fulfilled, obstacles were put in our way. Cyril’s father was quite willing for him to enlist while Billy’s mother was dead against it, my mother also, after all I was bringing wages home now. We three got our heads together one day to solve our problems, one, the ruling about reserved occupation, and two, our mothers. We decided to inform no-one and we met early one Thursday morning on 5th September 1940 at five o’clock but instead of going in to work we set off to Leeds trying for a lift. We reached Lady Lane Barracks and joined the queue for enlistment. Cyril and Billy were in immediately, seven years with the colours and five years on the reserve, they were told to forget the reserved occupation. I then met my recruiting officer who caused me so much upset as he was very unfeeling. He wouldn’t accept me, saying I was too young even though I was at that time eighteen years and four months. On going outside the sergeant came to me and said "Tell him your father’s dead and that you are nineteen." I went in again and was accepted into the K.O.Y.L.I. Cor, what a day! The pact was accomplished at last.

I had to go home now and we rode home in style using the Kings shilling we had each been given. I worried a bit, well a lot, about my reception at home, but after a few strong words and tears, I was in. I had to report to Scarborough Barracks in Doncaster a week later on the 12th September. Cyril and Billy were not sent for until June 1941. I never saw either again until 1947 as we served in different areas of war. Off I went happy as a lark.

Charles Ellis

PAGE ONE

Further articles by Charles Ellis:

In a Nutshell Part One: 1922 - 1940