The seasons

On recollection it always seemed that in my younger days the seasons were always clearly defined. Not so nowadays they all seem to be chaotic with hardly two days together being consistent and the predominant weather always bad. I remember as a child very often being allowed to sit on the front step in the evening in my pyjamas because it was too warm to sleep.

By the same token I remember the winters when the snow was very deep at one particular time and all roads were covered by at least two feet of snow. Although we did not have the mechanical means in those days to clear it, as they have now, we seemed to manage all right with more conventional means like the shovel. I must admit that the overall pressure in those days was nowhere as great as it is today and life proceeded at a much more leisurely pace.

The winter of 1946 was very bad and a lot of people were put under very great strain. Besides being very cold, it was a long drawn out season and affected all the major industries including gas, electricity and water, which of course added to the overall discomfort and misery. Because the roads were so bad, coal deliveries to the houses were badly affected and each household did its best to try to conserve all the fuel they had by various methods.

One way to do this was to make up the fire in the normal way and then cover the lumps of coal with slack (coal dust). The potato peelings which were saved were then put on top of the whole lot. This had the effect of slowing down the burning but still gave out heat, This was used mostly at night so that in the morning the room was fairly warm and all one needed to do was to open the damper to allow the air to flow under the glowing coals. The burnt ash was raked away and was usually thrown onto the pavement or road in the winter to give a little bit of grip on the ice. Put a few pieces of fresh coal on to the fire and within a short time the fire was roaring away. As anyone can tell you there is no more a welcome sight than a good coal fire on a cold day.

Richard's Tiles fireplace

Central heating is more convenient but in my opinion is most unhealthy. The small bore piping that is available for today's heating systems was not in use then so domestic heating was not a practical proposition and you would find it only in public buildings such as schools, libraries and so on, Because of the very nature of the size of these buildings the pipes were themselves about six inches in diameter and the radiators were enormous. The other point Is that they would not be economical in this form at today's fuel prices.

Collecting coal slack

During that very bad winter of 1946, other ways were found to supplement the shortage of coal. Very local to us was a spoil tip. This was where the stone and other waste material that was mined along with the coal from Hanley deep pit was dumped continuously twenty-four hours a day by means of a large bucket and cable arrangement, similar to the Alpine cable car system. Over the period when the weather was so bad it was not uncommon to see dozens of people swarming all over the tip with small hammers and all manner of containers, buckets, bags and tin bowls. You would see them hacking away at the lumps of stone, trying to get the last bits of coal off.

This was very hard work and in such low temperatures was very painful where fingers became frost bitten, it was not possible to work in gloves as you could not pick up the small pieces of coal. The best one could expect would be mittens without finger ends. The only other way was to suck your finger ends for a time to time to stop them becoming frost bitten. This is not a recommended pastime I would advise. Coal dust has very little to tempt the palate and, as I can testify from first hand knowledge, it took a very long time to collect an amount of coal.

I suppose we were more fortunate than some families in that myself and two brothers were able to do this together all for the one family although we did share it with our grandmother. Even when you had collected sufficient coal, moving the bag of coal still presented another problem. It was all right if two sacks had been used: then my two brothers would carry one each. One sack would be place over the crossbar of a bicycle and pushed home through the snow.

There was always a watchman on duty on the top of the tip who would move you away as it was dangerous because of the continual tipping, but as there were so many people and conditions were so bad he did not attempt to enforce the rule, not that he would have had much chance to do so. Unfortunately there was a small element of people who were looking for an easy way out and started to steal coal from, the railway trucks in the sidings that was destined for the furnaces at Shelton Bar.  This had the inevitable repercussion with the police being called and in turn everyone suffered as the whole thing was stopped and no more people were allowed on the tip.

Making do

Ingenuity always had a large part to play in everyday life during the war. No matter how difficult the challenge, we managed to make toys for children, rings for the ladies made from the Perspex of aircraft gun turrets and cigarette lighters from bullet cases. There were many more ambitious things made and the limitations were set only by the imagination of the inventor. This inventiveness also extended onto the food area. One such trick was take a pint of milk end add a chemical called Rennet which, when added to the milk curdled it. The thickened mixture was then pot into a piece of muslin cloth and hung out as a line to allow the last of the water content to drain away leaving what today we would call cottage cheese.

Other items on the domestic scene that were much sought after could be made by obtaining a quantity of parachute silk. How or where this came from one can only surmise, but to possess some caused a lot of people to be slightly envious. It was used for various projects but the only two I can recall were to make curtains and a brides dress.

Domestic life

Of course the domestic scene in those days was vastly different from today. There were no fully automatic waning machines which could be switched on and left to complete the task, The first thing that was required was to get up early on a Monday morning, go into the back kitchen, get a quantity of coal and sticks and light a fire under the brick built boiler which was situated in one corner. While the fire was kindling, we would get a bucket and fill the boiler with several buckets of cold water from the tap over the sink as that was the only supply available.

Back kitchen range - James & Tatton, Longton

There was no hot water tap or immersion heater to be seen. Usually other items used in the washing day chores could be seen standing around; items such as a dolly peg which was the forerunner of today's washing machine agitator.

The pawnshop

Money was in short supply during this era and one way to raise money was to visit the Pawnshop to hock (pledge) some item which would be worth a few bob until pay day. It was common practice to take your best suit in on Monday redeem it at the weekend when you received your week's wages and then having worn the suit at weekend, repeated the process again on the Monday.

The pawnbrokers shop was to be found next door to Cartlidge's Greengrocers, and was owned by Chawners outfitters, who until a few years ago still had their main shop in Hope Street Hanley. My elder brother worked for a while at the pawnbrokers and one of his jobs was to wheel a large two wheeled wooden cart at weekends up to the main shop in Hope Street, with all the large ledgers containing the records of all the pledges made where they were kept in a very big safe until Monday morning when they were returned back to the pawnshop for the usual Monday morning business. The two wheeled cart had steel rimmed wooden wheels and was very heavy to push, more so when loaded with the ledgers, no modern suspension in those days.