13 PARADE CRESCENT, WALKER

being the second part of the autobiography of
Elizabeth Masterman (later Bette Emmett)

b. 12.04.1913   d.13.10.1998

We always used the back door at Parade Crescent. The front door was opened only to polish it and wash the steps and front path. Entering from the back lane, you stepped into the back yard, directly on your right was the midden or netty (lavatory if you want to be polite), brick built, white-washed inside, it had a wooden seat which was built across the back, wall to wall and boxed in, with a hole in the middle. The ashes from the kitchen range were tipped down here every morning when the range was cleaned out and served to cover over what had been done the day before. The midden men came round every week and raked out all the muck and ashes through a trap door which opened into the back lane. The pit was then swilled out, seat and floor well scrubbed, fresh bunches of newspaper threaded on string hung on the nail, and clean ashes tipped down and all was ready for the next day’s use. There was a candle in a candlestick for use after dark.

To the left as you came in the back yard door was the wash house. It served both No. 11 and No. 13 and had a door into each yard. There was a bench, a stone sink and cold water tap and a set pot under which you had to light a fire, after filling it with cold water of course, and wait until it got hot enough to start the washing. Under the bench stood the two wooden tubs each with their poss-sticks. Heavy wooden things both tubs and poss-sticks, and took considerable strength to handle them. No fancy washing machines or soap powders then, it was very hard work to wash. Blue mottled soap and a scrubbing brush were all the aids we had. In the winter women’s hands were red and chapped and sore from the soda in the soap. After the washing was finished the yard and back steps were swilled and scrubbed with a yard broom.

A flight of stone steps led up from the yard to the scullery door. In you went, two more steps (of wood) up to the floor of the scullery, on your left a larder or pantry , a bench and a sink under the small window; to your right an iron gas cooker and a small table. It was very small, the scullery, maybe six feet wide by seven or eight long. Up two more steps and into the living room or kitchen as it was always called. There was the usual black-leaded kitchen range with a cupboard at either side to your right as you entered, a large table in the centre of the room, behind the table against the wall facing the range was grandfather’s pride and joy, an organ on which he occasionally played hymns. It was quite an attractive looking piece, but we were never allowed to touch it. There was a couch along the far wall and various chairs, wooden chairs, needless to say, no comfortable upholstered chairs in there. Lino on the floor and clippie mats, one big one in front of the range, smaller ones at either side of the table. Two doors, one either side of the organ, the nearer one leading into grandma’s bedroom, the other onto the stair head.

From the stair head another flight went up to the attics and two doors opened, one into another bedroom, the other into the holy of holies, the “Parlour”. This was carpeted and had a horsehair suite (couch, two armchairs and four small chairs), a what-not in the corner, chest of drawers in another corner, a round table with heavy red tablecloth in the centre of the room, an overmantel above the fireplace, Nottingham lace curtains at the window. We went in there only on very special occasions, and I was in the Parlour only about twice in the whole time I lived there. It was no loss to me, I hated the place. It was dark and dreary and the black horsehair suite was absolute hell to sit on – it was like sitting on a pin cushion.

The two attic rooms were not very big and mum could not get much of her furniture up there, so there were only the beds and a table and a few chairs for us up there. As I said, the piano and other bits and pieces went into Aunt Manny’s flat downstairs. Effie was learning the play the piano at that time, but Aunt Manny would not allow her to go into her parlour to practise, so after a year or so the piano was sold, along with other things. Little by little all my mum’s things went as bills had to be paid and work for dad in the shipyard was becoming scarce as it was for everybody else after the war. The loss of the piano was a loss to mam and she was determined to have another just as soon as she could have a home of her own again, but it wasn’t until I was grown up that she finally got one.

We had to have paraffin lamps up in the attic – the gas pipes didn’t go up there. My grandfather was a pleasant man and we got on all right with him, he would smile and joke with us, ruffle our hair and give us a strong mint which he had had, and we would get our Saturday penny from him. He was a small man, slightly bow-legged and looked something like King George because he wore the same kind of beard as the King. He was Superintendent of the Methodist Sunday School so we children had to attend there every Sunday. My grandmother was a small plump woman with dark hair dragged back into a bun. She had black beady eyes and her nose and mouth curved towards each other, and her mouth was a thin straight line between them. She never smiled at me that I can recall, and Effie cannot remember her ever smiling at her or Annie either. She struck terror into our childish hearts, and we kept out of her way as much as we could. She was never cruel to us though, and looking back at it I can understand that she was fed up having us there. She had brought up a family of seven, four boys and three girls, which would not be easy for her, and she was getting on in years and just when she was looking forward to an easier time in her life, here she was with a whole family in her house. My mother did most of the work and all of the cooking for us and my father, but Grandma would not enjoy having another woman in her kitchen, and four children in and about her.

Then on January 8th 1921 my mother had another son, my brother Michael, so there were five children. So it is not surprising that she resented having all this upheaval. Mother told me, years after, that she could have got on all right with the old people if my father’s sister, who lived in the downstairs flat (No. 11) had not been such a mischief maker.

We settled down into the routine of the house and I at least was happy enough. I was too young to take any notice of the scraps between the women folk. I started school at West Walker, so from 9 in the morning till 12 noon when we all came home to dinner, then back to school for 2 and finishing at 4.30 pm, home for tea then out in the back lane playing till bedtime, my days were fully occupied. Saturdays were good, no school, and we got our pocket money, 1d from dad and 1d from Grandad. The morning was spent looking in the sweetshop windows trying to decided what we would buy. A halfpenny would buy a bag of home-made toffee sprinkled with coconut at Armstrong’s shop along Church Street, or a bag of bruised fruit, there would be an orange, a pear, or banana, a few nuts, one or two dates or plums – quite a selection. For another halfpenny we could get one ounce of satin cushions, a sherbet dab, a stick of everlasting toffee, liquorice root, tiger nuts, a few locust beans, lucky potato, aniseed balls, acid drops or any of dozens of other kinds of sweets. It took us all morning to make our minds up what we would have, and a very pleasant way of spending a Saturday morning too.

When we had made our purchases we would go home for our dinner, then at 1.30 pm we would make our way to the Vaudeville, which was the local picture house. In we would troop along with all the rest of the junior populace of Walker, to sit on hard wooden benches and scuffle and push each other about, pulling hair and snatching caps off heads and making a fearful din. Then the piano player would enter, take her seat, and start to play, all the kids would start to sing and stamp their feet in time to the music, the dust would rise in clouds from the bare wooden floor. At two o’clock the lights would be turned out and the shop would start, a terrific cheer from us, and Pathe’s Gazette was on. This was the news. The piano player would keep her eye on the screen and play sad or cheerful music to fit the picture. After the news would come the serial, Pearl White and all her adventures. Every week we would see her get into some fearful situations at the hands of the villains, hanging from windows upside down, being tied to the railway and the express thundering down on her, or tied to a bench and a huge circular saw getting nearer and nearer, then it would end, “Will she escape? See next week’s instalment.” What fun! Then the big picture came after that, it would be a cowboy – Tom Mix and his horse Tony, Elmo the Mighty, which was like Tarzan, Eddie Polo, which was a circus star’s adventures. When that was finished, a message was flashed on the screen “DON’T LEAVE YOUR SEATS. THERE’S A COMIC.” Hurrah! Everyone would yell, clap their hands, whistle and shriek with joy, it would usually be Charlie Chaplin and how we loved him. Sometimes it was Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Larry Semon or Louise Fazenda. Great stuff. The show ended about 4 pm, two hours of happiness and excitement we got for a penny. So with our pennyworth of sweets we had bought in the morning and our other penny spent on the pictures, we got quite a lot of entertainment for tuppence. Going to Saturday matinee? We called it “Going to the penny scrush.”

When we got home for tea Annie would relate all our adventures to mum and dad and re-enact all the pictures for them, she would not shut up till she had told them the whole thing from start to finish. What a talker that girl was. Dad used to say she had been vaccinated with a gramophone needle. After tea we played in the yard and back lane for a while then Grandma and Grand-da would get ready and go to the first House at the Vaudeville. We would be called in and bath night would start. The water had to be heated in the kettles and pans and the tin bath would be brought in from the yard. It was hard work for mum carrying water up and down those attic stairs, dad would give her a hand with that chore, until the last child was bathed, then he would get ready and go out too.

After our bath we would all get a dose of Scott’s Emulsion (cod liver oil stuff and foul) then a dose of California Syrup of Figs, to keep our bowels in working order. We would all be in bed (except Effie – her hair was waist length and took a long time to dry) by the time the old people came back from the pictures.

Sunday morning we would be dressed in our best clothes, and after breakfast we would be sent for a walk around the Park. We were not allowed to play games on Sunday mornings, we were expected to walk sedately round the tennis courts and bowling greens, and behave ourselves. As I’ve described our clothes in the first chapter, I need not describe them again except that on Sundays we had our best coats and shoes on, and as if that wasn’t enough we had to wear straw hats too. Oh, those awful hats! The straw was stiff and unyielding and we had elastic bands on them from ear to ear under our chins, to keep them firmly on. My hair was so curly that if I did not have an elastic band the hat would rise up on the top of my hair, pushed up by the thick springy curls of my hair, so my band had to be tight. The agony of it was awful – I felt as if I was being choked and if I turned my head or looked up at the sky the straw brim would dig in to the nape of my neck and I would feel as if my head was being slowly cut off. Play!!! With those things on? How I longed to roll on the grass and take my shoes off and paddle in the lake, Walker Park had a lake in those days, swans on it too, and ducks.

While we were out walking the women would be cooking the Sunday dinner. After dinner we all went to Sunday School, straw hats, squeaky stiff shoes and all. After tea was the best part of Sunday. The old people would go to Chapel, and mum would take off our Sunday clothes, put on our everyday clothes, and we could go out to play for an hour or so before bed. Then Sunday supper and so to bed.

We always had our suppers upstairs in the attic, the other meals we had downstairs in the kitchen, with Grandma’s beady eyes on us. The other nights our supper consisted of bread dipped in hot beef dripping, and cocoa which mum made downstairs in the scullery and brought up on a tray to the attic, but Sunday supper we got a bit of cold meat left over from the joint, and a piece of cold Yorkshire pudding with our cocoa. I liked supper times, dad, mum and us were all together in our attic, and they would talk and tell stories of their childhood and of the day's happenings and with the lamp lit it would be cosy. No Grandma glaring at you from the chair in the corner. Dad would sometimes get his one stringed fiddle out and play us a tune and sing a song or two. He would sing sad songs, and the tear would roll down his cheeks, and we kids would blink the tear away from our eyes. Then mam would say, “What have we done to deserve this?” and we would all laugh and be happy again.

Then the week would start again. Mondays was washing day. The yard and wash house full of tubs and poss sticks, mangle and bath, and the three women, Grandma, mother and Aunt Manny, hard at it all day. The back lane full of clothes lines and flapping wet clothes, no room for kids to play, so we would go over to the Park or into the front street to play our games when we came from school.

Tuesday, we would run home from school at tea time, rush up the back stairs, mam would give us a large slice of bread and jam and a penny and we would tear off to the Vaudeville again for the children’s show, which started at 4.30. As we didn’t finish school till 4.30 it was a mad gallop all the way down Church Street from school, panting up the back stairs, thundering down again with our money and bread clutched in our hands, and over to the pictures. We’d only miss the news, thank Heaven, no loss really. There’d be another serial, “The Masked Riders” or some such, some more comics and a big picture. We did love these shows, and we would act them all out in our play, galloping all over Walker, hiding treasure on the Pit Head, playing cowboys on the waste ground that we called the Little Hills because the waste from the pit had been dumped them just haphazard, and grass had grown over it, and it was all ups and downs, and to me it was a big place, just like the hills the cowboys were always galloping about on.

We spent all the summer in the Park, plodging in the lake and catching tiddlers. On fine days we would have a picnic. Mam would give us sandwiches and buns in a basket and the tea already milked and sugared in her brass kettle. Effie would be in charge, she would push our Mick in his pram, and off we would go. The brass kettle would attract all eyes, and we were always followed by groups of other bairns, telling each other to “Look at them kids with a gold kettle.”

Easter Sunday morning we went round all the relations and friends giving their children dyed pace eggs and oranges and receiving eggs and oranges in return. Mam would dye the eggs on the Saturday, some with onion skins in the boiling water to make them brown, some dyed blue or red with a piece of blue or red material in the water to get the dye colour. Easter Monday we would go over the Park with our eggs and roll them down the bank until they cracked and then we would eat them.

Whit Monday was always a great day for us. All the churches and chapels would parade the streets. Decorated wagons would be used to carry the smallest children from the Sunday school, larger children walking behind and mothers and fathers walking alongside. The wagons were horse drawn, the horses being decorated with ribbons and paper flowers. There would be three or four wagons from each church or chapel and the young adults would spend hours every evening for a couple of weeks beforehand making the frameworks and twisting coloured paper round them and fastening paper roses and garlands to them. Early on Whit Monday the wagons would arrive at the chapel and the men would nail the frameworks to them. We children used to stand about waiting for the big cart horses to arrive. When they were safely harnessed up, the bairns would be lifted into the wagons and sit on forms. There was always some mother who would be scared the horse was flighty and worry about the safety of her child, and always another one or two who thought her bairn should be in the wagon when it was obviously big enough to walk. Getting all these problems sorted out was the work of Grandad, with other men to help, and then when everything was settled to everybody’s satisfaction, off we would go and join up with the wagons from the Parish Church and the Presbyterians. The Roman Catholics had their own procession in the afternoons.

We would march all round Walker, stopping at various places to sing hymns and have a sermon from one or other of the ministers or the Vicar. Back to the chapel to unload, then home for a cold lunch. Then to the Park. The shopkeepers would have stalls in the big field, and we would have coppers to spend on sweets and ice cream and pop, we’d meet all our friends and the parents would wander round and chat with their friends. There would be races to run, small prizes given to the winners, this organized by the churches. Then at 4 o’clock we would go to the chapel where we had tea and a bag of buns. Then back to the Park, where the stall holders would be dismantling their stalls and we kids would search round in the hope of finding coppers that they might have dropped in the grass.

On the Whit Sunday and the Sunday after we would have all the bairns on the platform in the chapel. Each child would have been learning a poem or song for weeks beforehand. All their parents were in the audience, and when your name was called, you stood up and did your piece. We girls would have new clothes for Whit, usually a white dress and the boys had new white shirts. Mind you, our mother never got us thin summery white frocks for this occasion. We would have cream serge or gabardine dresses which would be our best clothes for the rest of the summer.

Some of the older members of the chapel would also sing or recite, Grandad usually singing a hymn, and there was one young woman who always gave a heart-rending recitation about a little girl who died. Very sad! At Harvest Festival time they would have a Concert. Grandad again would organize this, a “Cantata” he would call it. All the bairns and young adults would be in this, and we would attend rehearsals for weeks to learn our parts. There would be solos and choruses, sketches and recitations, and we would be dressed for the parts, mam usually helping to make the costumes. One year, believe it or not, I was a fairy, and another occasion I was a daisy. Effie was Britannia on one memorable concert. Mam made her costume and trident, but was stuck for a helmet, so she went to the Fire Station and borrowed a fireman’s brass helmet. Poor Effie having to wear the heavy thing, it must have weighed several pounds.

After the concert which was held on the Monday after Harvest Sunday, all the fruit and vegetables which had been brought for the Harvest Thanksgiving would be sold, Grandad being the auctioneer. He was always in there at everything that went on, and worked tirelessly for his chapel. He was well-liked by everyone.

There used to be a bandstand in the Park, and on fine Sundays there would be a band playing there. We all went with our parents, they sitting on the small chairs put out for the occasion, we kids sitting on the grass. Pleasant evenings, when everyone met and had a chat and listened to the music, which was usually good as the pits round Walker and Wallsend all had their brass or silver band. The firemen and police too had their own bands.

All this has gone now, the bandstand destroyed by vandals, the Robbie Burns statue, which stood in Walker Park for as long as I can recall had also been removed and is now in Heaton Park. All the flower beds gone, the tennis courts dilapidated, the bowling greens no longer looked after as well as they were in my young days. We played in Walker Park all my childhood and never did we see such vandalism as there is today. It was a lovely Park then, now it’s just an open space with trees and bushes, and most of them damaged. We would play in the streets in safety too, no cars and lorries thundering up and down, only the occasional horse and cart. The coalman, fishman, fruitman, ragman, ice cream man came up the back lane shouting their wares. The ragman had a bugle which could be heard all over Walker and we would pester our mum for old rags, we would get a balloon or a stick of rock for them. We got beggars too, poor people who came down the streets singing, a woman with a baby in her arms used to come regularly. If our parents had any coppers to spare we would give them a penny, but times were hard and frequently their were no pennies to spare.

We had to make our own amusements. We had no expensive toys to play with, the games we played were communal, all the kids in the street joining in. “Queenie, Queenie, who’s got the ball?” “Up for Monday,” “What time is it, Mr. Wolf?” “Charlie over the water,” “On the mountain stands a lady,” – all games that everybody could join in. Skipping, tops and whips, marbles, all came in their season. We played “boody shops” with all the bits of broken pottery and china we could find. We always kept our eyes open for bits and pieces of china as we ran about the waste ground and kept them in boxes, then we would “have a shop”, set them all out in small heaps according to type of crockery or china, and pretend they were sweets. We would make cakes of stiff clay and decorate them with flowers or berries, and grate coloured chalk over them for the icing. We had hoops which we would beg from the fruit shops (they were the hoops off apple barrels) and we would run round bowling them.

One of two of the lads had iron hoops which they bowled along with an iron hook. These were made by the blacksmith, so cost money and only the better-off parents could afford them. We had small wheels made from boot-polish tins. A hole pierced through the middle of the lid, a length of string knotted in the hole, and there you were, you ran along with one end of the string in your hand, the lid running merrily along at your side. We had tin cans on our feet, clopping along like horses. These were just ordinary food tins, with two holes punched in the bottom and a long length of string knotted though them. You stood on the tins, held the strings in your hands and walked along like that.

Effie made a “peep show”. This was a large cardboard carton with a small hole in one end through which you “peeped”. She had it decorated like a stage set and had coloured cardboard figures and scenery. Long strips of cardboard were fixed to the figures so they could be moved back and forward through slits in the sides of the box. She had “Cinderella”, “Sleeping Beauty” etc., and she would set the stage, all the bairns would have a peep through the hole and she would tell us the story as she moved the figures about. One night it was forgotten and left out in the back yard. It rained heavily that night so the “peep show” was ruined. She never had the heart to make another one, so many hours of painstaking work had gone into it.

Grandad had a garden, it was just across the back lane. He grew vegetables and a few flowers there, and dad kept chickens. We had about forty chickens so there was always plenty of eggs, and when the hens stopped laying, mam would kill and ploat them and we would have chicken for dinner. Dad could not kill them, he couldn’t get the knack of wringing their necks, but mam could do it. He reared his own chicks in an incubator he had, and I loved seeing the chicks come out of the shells and in an hour or so they were running about pecking seed. They looked like little balls of yellow wool on tiny knitting needles.

Beyond the garden was a stretch of waste land, and beyond that were Henzell’s Byres. Mr. Henzell was a farmer and kept a couple of dozen dairy cows, a few pigs, ducks and geese and chickens, a donkey and best of all as far as I was concerned, two horses which were used to pull the milk carts. His sons came round morning and evening with the fresh milk, which was ladled out of the big milk churns into your jug. I was always hanging round there, pestering their lives out for a ride on the milk cart, and in the byres watching them milking the cows. He (the farmer) owned the big field which is now occupied by the Rochester Dwellings, and the cows were driven round there in the morning after the milking, and brought back in the evening. I loved going with them, helping to herd the cows.

My dad liked being in the byres too, and was often over there, chatting to the lads. He fancied himself as a weight lifter and one day the lads egged him on to lift the donkey. This he did by putting his shoulders under the donkey’s belly and holding its legs. Whether he did himself some injury by this I don’t know, but it was shortly after that he had his first haemorrhage. He was very ill and in hospital for some six weeks. When he got better, there was no work in the shipyard, and this was a very bad time for us. All the money they had coming in was 11/- per week. This was the time that the piano and all my mam’s bits of jewellery and items of furniture were sold to keep us going.

I suppose that living with Grandma and Grandad helped as all our resources were pooled. Grandad owned the two flats No. 11 and No. 13, and I expect Aunty Manny would pay rent for No. 11 and dad would be paying rent for the attics we lived in.

Aunt Manny’s husband was a miner, so he was working but Grandad would be out of work at this time as he was a riveter in the shipyard. Things were bad but they managed somehow and we were never without good food and never had to go barefoot as some bairns did. I can remember the poor bairns’ feet blue with the cold on winter’s days going to school, ice and snow on the ground, their ragged garments not enough to keep them warm. No wonder so many of them died of tuberculosis, pneumonia and the like. So many of them had rickets too, from poor feeding.

There was a soup kitchen on Church Street near the Parish Church and the poor children went there for a meal at dinner time. If your father was out of work you could go and get a hot dinner but my parents would never ask for us, we could always manage to have enough food at home. We always had good boots and warm clothing too, though how mam managed it all I do not know – doing without herself and selling all her bits of things, no doubt. Thank God for our good parents, they brought us safely through all the bad times, but at what cost to themselves?

My dad was never the same after his illness and mam had recurring bouts of asthma that were distressing to watch. They must have been about 37 years old at this time, but their health was ruined and their youth gone.

When my brother Michael was about two years old and I was about ten years old, my parents got a house on the Walker Estate [Belford Terrace]. The shipyards had some work, and dad was working again, so there was great joy. At last a house of our own. We went up to look at our new house, and - joy of joys - it had a bath, three bedrooms, living room and scullery, a nice garden too, front and back. It seemed like heaven after our cramped conditions in the attics. We didn’t have much furniture but we had enough to start with so we moved and settled down to start the next phase of our lives.

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