"Ah'd Gaa Back Tomorra!" Find!
When I read "The Cumberland Coast" by Neil Curry (see earlier find) he mentioned in the chapter about Whitehaven how the screen lasses worked sorting and grading the coal at the local pits. This caught my attention and after some good detective work I have now found and read this wonderful book "Ah'd Gaa Back Tomorra!" which is a compilation of the memories of the West Cumbrian Screen Lasses. This gem of a book was published in 2004 by the Whitehaven Miners' Memorial and Living History Project. The book was the end result of a series of oral history workshops run by the Workers' Educational Association.
As Sue Donnelly, the W.E.A. Development Worker says in the foreword: 'The women we encountered in these workshops are women of spirit, resilient in the way they often faced early hardship and the hard physical work of the screens. But the tales they tell are also full of camaraderie and laughter. What they all cherish most are their memories of the mining community and the collective willingness amongst neighbours and workers to give support and to share what little they had with one another when times got hard'.
Many of the women came from large families with up to eleven children for the parents to feed and care for. Many of them recall the deaths of brothers and sisters in infancy and most of them started work between the ages of 14 and 16. Their working clothes consisted of a pinny, clogs with stockings pulled over them, called 'scoggers', to keep their feet warm, white scarves round their heads with a beret on top and a coat, tightly buttoned.
Annie explains what a screen lass did: 'We stood at a 'table', which was a conveyer belt carrying coal on it. Our job was to pick out all the slate and stone, which was termed 'metal' or 'brass' and pile it up around us until there was hardly room left to stand. There were two or three tables with different sizes of coal on each. Big coal was called the six-quarter table and we had to take turns on each table. Then the gaffer, George (Geordie) Smith, who was watching us from the gantry, would take two of us off the conveyer belt to shovel the waste down a chute into the crusher and the wagons underneath. This was called 'driving a clear'.
Despite the incredibly tough working conditions the women relate how they would sit round and sing and tell jokes when there was a break of any kind during the day. They worked hard but still had time to socialise in the evenings and at weekends and nearly all of them talk about the dances at The Empress or going to see variety shows at the Opera in Workington. Isabella recalls how 'You had to run a la'al bit from the screens to the bathhouse and we used to rush to get washed and changed on a Friday night after back shift so that we could get to the dances. I always had lovely tight curly hair so I could just get a shower and I just had to let my hair dry naturally. The other lasses would be putting their curlers in. Wednesdays and Fridays were the Empress nights, Thursdays was the Bethel and then there was the Welfare. No drink or owt like that, just dancing, jiving - we could dance all night - even after back shift! We used to use Vaseline to get the coal dust from round our eyes. Nobody needed to use mascara'.
The stories of the West Cumbrian Screen Lasses are a glimpse into the industrial heritage of our county and show us how they helped to shape the local communities which exist today.
"A vital part of mining then
Was women working hard as men
Without equality of pay
Which mere existence did portray
So work or want a true adage
And why screen lasses sought a wage"
Victor O'Connor
In 2005 BBC Radio Four broadcast some of these reminiscences on Woman's Hour where you can still listen to the voices of these remarkable women.
www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/2005_10_thu_06.shtml
24 September 2009 from Mary Rossall
Finds
- On Lindale Hill
- Grange-over-Sands: The Story of a Gentle Township
- The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland
- Red Ike
- Cumbrian Privies
- Ethel Fisher's West Cumbrian Dialect titles
- The Embalmer's Book of Recipes by Ann Lingard
- Nella Last's Peace
- Riding the Stang by Dawn Robertson
- Life on the Fell - a pictorial chronicle of a Lakeland community
- About Scout Scar
- William Wilberforce - A Summer Diary 1779
- Beatrix Potter - the unknown years
- Smoke over Shap by Margaret Potter
- Songs of a Cragsman by George Basterfield
- The Grasmere Dialect Plays
- The Grizedale Experience: Sculpture, Art & Theatre in a Lakeland Forest
- An Atlas of The English Lakes
- How Hall. Poetry and Memories. A Passion for Ennerdale by Tom Rawling
- Stumpy, Hero of the Lakes
- The High Places by A. Harry Griffin
- The Highest House in Wathendale
- Kendal by Roger Bingham
- Secrets and Legends of Old Westmorland
- Reminiscences of Wordsworth Among the Peasantry of Westmorland by Canon Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley
- Little Gods by Jacob Polley
- A Lakeland Summer
- Hunter of Harter Fell by Joseph E Chipperfield
- And Nobody Woke Up Dead
- An accessible paradise
- The Fleming Family novels and Graham Sutton
- Excursion to Loweswater. A Lakeland Visit 1865
- Writing on the Wall
- Beyond Scafell by Alan Robinson
- Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole
- Kendal In The Nineteenth Century by A Wainwright
- In There Somewhere
- The Bondwomen by W G Collingwood
- "Ah'd Gaa Back Tomorra!"
- A Cumbrian Copper by Ray Huddart
- The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards
- Old Will Stories by Dudley Hoys
- The Shield Ring by Rosemary Sutcliff
- T'Bacca Queen by Theodora Wilson Wilson
- Furness and the Industrial Revolution
- The Shadow of Black Combe
- The Painted Letters of Percy Kelly
- Ivver Sen
- Lakeland in the 1830s
- Wasdale Climbing Book By Michael Cocker
- Riding High by Barbara Sneyd
- Deborah in Langdale
- Early Recollections of Grange
- Hazard's Way by Roger Hubank
- Yan, Tan, Tethera
- Talk of the Town
- Capturing the Mountains
- Hope On, Hope Ever
- Mildred Edwards: Our City Our People 1889 - 1978 Memories
- Lakeland Limericks
- Surrounding loveliness
- Haweswater by Sarah Hall
- Coast to Coast by Jan Minshull
- Sunshine To The Sunless
- Geese, cattle wallopers and secret Irish paths
- Anarchists, Angels and wet Bank Holiday Mondays
- A more unconventional kind of find...?
- Skiddaw Summit by Kathleen Jones
- Thorstein of the Mere: A Saga of the Northmen in Lakeland
- Wednesday Early Closing
- Smoke Across The Fell
- The Sand Pilot of Morecambe Bay
- The Chronicles of Boggerthwaite
- Carrock Fell
- Feet in the Clouds
- Hercules and the Farmer's Wife
- Shepherd's Warning
- The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
- I've been so busy reading I haven't had time to blog!
Recent posts
- Reading Detectives film
- Thank you!
- Coffee and books at the Bluebell Bookshop
- Mary learns to blog!
- Lucky 13!
- Grange over Sands get reading
Help the team
Have you got something to contribute? You can contact us to report your clues and you can comment on our blog posts. It doesn't matter where in the world you are!
Leave a comment