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My Life Story as told by Noel Garvin. Spoken and recorded by Noel for his family and given to us by his wife. Thank you Cath.
My Early Life
"I was born the 21st December 1921. I lived at 16 Clavering Avenue, Dunston. It was a two bed-roomed upstairs flat and in those days, families all lived close together. My Gran lived in a flat the same as ours at the top of the street, it was number 130. Now my Aunt Jean lived at the bottom of the street at number 14. Now times in those days were very hard in the 1920s, there was very little work and people used to stand around the street corners in groups hoping they might get some little job to do for a few coppers. My father in a way was lucky now, lucky because he was a miner and in those days miners used picks and shovels to dig out the coal. They didn't have machines like they have now. No pithead baths. They used to come home from work black dirty and wet with the coal dust. My father had been right through the 1914-18 war and very few men lasted that long. Unfortunately he had got gassed when he was in the trenches and it had left him with a very bad stomach and very poor health and in those days if you were off work sick someone would take your job off you so you had to work it doesn't matter how bad you were so many mothers had to work. We had to help the family by taking in washing, making things, going out to work anything or anywhere to get money to exist on.
My mother was a charwoman she used to go down to the Cross Keys every morning and scrub out the bar. I remember getting a ride on her back while she scrubbed the bar floors then, when she had finished, she would come back from work, come home, get changed and then go back to the Cross Keys that was about eleven o'clock because she was a barmaid. Now my mother's aunt was the manageress of the Cross Keys so that's how she helped mother out so mother worked from seven o'clock in the morning until ten thirty at night. That was when all the bars closed.
Now I started school in 1926 that was the time of the General Strike and all of the men in the country came out on strike. They came out for more money, as they couldn't live on the wages they got. It was a terrible time for everyone; people were dying because they had nothing to eat. Finally the bosses forced the men back to work because they couldn't stand and let their family starve to death. So for the next few years things were very slow to get back to normal. By the early thirties you could see a glimmer of hope."
To read the rest of Noel Garvin's story go to Memories - see link in column to right (Podcasts - Memories of Clayton and Davie).
Comments
Please give me a ring on 07989 114515
Posted by: Stephen Mclean at December 15, 2009 8:37 PM