‘Won’t they jump at the chance to take on so fine a man?’ Polly’s love and belief in him sustained him throughout that long day and the next. But as the days and weeks passed and summer turned to autumn, then into winter, it became clear there was little work of any kind available.
Eileen lost her baby and very nearly her life six months into her pregnancy, but even from this she came back smiling, determined to find a silver lining in her dull grey world. Sitting in Polly’s kitchen with Rosie and Agnes playing at her feet, Meryl sprawled asleep on her lap and Beryl draped about her neck as usual, she didn’t offer one word of complaint except to say, ‘What a place to bring childer up, eh? If this lot survive it’ll be a miracle, or the goodness of your sad cake, Polly.’
‘I’ve none today.’ Her flour bin had been empty for over a week.
Her own children were poor, Polly thought, but Eileen’s were pitiful, dressed in clothes with more holes than cloth. Unlike Benny and Lucy, who were scrubbed regularly from top to toe, none of the Grimshaw children were clean and all so painfully thin it hurt to look at them, for all they bore the evidence of a recent meal involving jam. When she remarked upon this, Eileen merely shrugged her shoulders and grinned philosophically.
‘I do me best, and I’m just hoping and praying I don’t fall again or we’ll have even less to eat.’ Now the smile did slip, to be replaced by something very like panic.
‘Have you asked him to wear a rubber? You know, a . . .’ Polly flushed as she ran out of courage to use the correct word.
‘Dear Lord, if I told him how to stop making babies he’d be spreading his favours everywhere. He wouldn’t want me then. No, I’m the one who has to stop ‘em coming, if I could but work out how. I’ve tried laxatives and gin. All they do is make me feel sick. I’ve sat with me feet in a mustard bath, and even tried daft things like a wet sponge and cocoa-butter.’ She snorted with laughter, falling quickly silent. ‘God knows what I’ll do next time.’
‘There are safer ways,’ Polly said, knowing she shouldn’t even be talking about such things as a Catholic, for all she was a lapsed one. Yet the poor girl needed help, and the fear of her doing something desperate to herself or her next unborn child was never far from Polly’s mind. She told Eileen the address of a clinic she’d heard of which helped women, in strictest confidence, to control the size of their families.
‘You mean, they won’t tell Terence?’
Polly shook her head. ‘If you ask them not to.’
‘I wouldn’t want him to find out, see, or he’d think I was on the game again. They won’t think me - you know - loose, will they?’
‘Why should they?’
‘I don’t know.’ Eileen pulled the too-short skirt of her dress over her scrawny knees. ‘Only it doesn’t seem right to try and stop them, do it? I mean, if you don’t want water, you don’t take your bucket to the well, do you?’
Polly smiled. ‘That would make you very thirsty.’ And both women chuckled with embarrassment. ‘You’ll try the clinic? It’s above a cooked pie shop in Salford.’
Eileen frowned. ‘If it’s free, and secret, I’ll happen give it a go. Otherwise I’ll have to take me chances. Women’s lot, eh?’ And she shrugged and grinned. The subject was closed.
By the spring of 1930 Matthew felt utterly desperate. ‘
‘There’ll be more work now, with summer coming up,’ Polly had comforted him, but the more he searched, the more of a battering he took.
He felt as if he were no longer a man, as if he’d been robbed of some essential part of his character. Every morning he went down to the Working Men’s Institute where he would scour the papers, seeking anything that looked likely, but even if there were a job advertised, which was a rare enough event, he’d find a score or more men there before him, no matter how early he got up, or how quick off the mark he was.
He asked among the barges at Castlefield, the warehouses in Water Street, Irlam Park Wharf, Stanley Street, and any number of other wharves till he quite lost count. He talked to all the big firms, including the Bridgewater Department of Ship Canal Company itself, among others.
Never had he known it so bad. He stood in a crowd of men every morning, like cattle to market, all praying for work. The word would go out that a foreman was looking for a couple of gangs. Backs would straighten, eyes would brighten and in ten minutes or less it was all over with the foreman having picked his favourites, as always. If Matthew had had the money in his pocket he’d have paid for a bit of favouritism himself. As it was he would jam his cap more firmly in place to hide the fear in his eyes, thrust his hands deeper into his pockets and stride to the next dock, walking a little slower each day as hope gradually diminished.
He even swallowed his pride and called on his old boss at the narrow-boats to ask for his job back, but to no avail. All he managed to find was the odd day of casual labour here and there, for which he was grateful, but nothing regular. With nowhere near a living wage coming in, he felt close to despair.
Within months of the start of the New Year, there were rumours of a financial catastrophe that became known as the Wall Street Crash. It had taken place over in America a few months previously, and began to have an effect even in Lancashire. It ruined a good many cotton barons who lost their shares or invested capital, their savings disappearing overnight. Add to that the problem of increased competition from abroad, Ghandi conducting his boycott of British goods, cotton in particular since his own people produced it now, that it began to look as if the industry was in its death throes. Cotton districts began to resemble ghost towns.
And then, to the dismay and terror of the entire street, Dove Street Mill announced its intention of laying off more than a quarter of its workforce. The workers were instructed that in future they’d be expected to run six looms, instead of the usual four.
Even Joshua’s job was at risk.
Matthew was astonished. ‘But you’re well thought of, a tackler no less. Why would they lay you off? They’ll still need you to fettle the looms.’
‘I was told that since I’m a single man, my need is not so great as a married one with a wife and family to keep. They’re the ones, apparently, who need the work while I don’t. In addition I live with my mother who has a pension of ten shillings a week, so you see how well off we are.’
Polly listened, appalled, for it seemed like the beginning of the end. But at least the two brothers were in entire agreement for once regarding the selfish greed of the bosses and politicians. Who else could they blame?
‘If we’d had time to get a decent union going,’ Joshua said, ‘they’d never have dared do this to us.’
The union was new and raw, a mere fledgling power against the might of the bosses. And since not every cotton worker was a member, largely ineffective. Many folk were only too willing to operate six looms rather than face the alternative of no work at all. It caused dissention between families, open brawls in the street, even a near-riot on one occasion outside Dove Street Mill.
Joshua stood proud on his soap box, gesticulating wildly and shouting at colleagues and neighbours, many of them women since it was they who normally did the weaving. But there were men there too, supporting them, needing the money their wives brought in; spinners with a deep knowledge of the industry; and other tacklers employed by the mill to be in charge of a number of looms. In addition there were those whose jobs were linked in some other way to cotton, perhaps in engineering, chemical dyeing or transport.
Joshua brandished a fist. ‘You should have listened to me in the first place. Now we must all stand firm, as one against the bosses.’
‘It’s all right for you,’ one woman shouted. ‘My husband’s unemployed and I’ve childer to feed, which is more than you have Joshua Pride.’
A chorus of agreement rippled through the angry crowd, the words pricking deeply at Joshua’s rawest spot. As a young man he’d enjoyed walking out with one or two attractive girls but those relationships had come to nothing. Women,
he’d discovered, were fickle creatures and although he enjoyed, and took, his pleasures like any normal male, he didn’t regret his single state. It gave him more time to concentrate on the business of the chapel which was far more important to him. But he hated this lack of a wife to be used as a weapon against his perfectly sound arguments. He stuck firmly to his argument.
‘If nobody agrees to take on six looms, the bosses can do nothing to make us.’
‘Aye, they bloody can!’ a man at the back of the crowd called out. ‘They could sack the lot of us and there’d be no shortage of folk ready to take our places.’
The Dove Street managers did indeed win the day as sufficient workers agreed to operate six looms. The rest were sacked, including Joshua himself, by way of retaliation for his ‘incitement to riot’.
It was a glum if united family who, for once, sat together long into the night, talking over possible ways out of their troubles. No immediate solution presented itself and they all finally retired, red-eyed and weary-hearted, to their respective beds.
Only Joshua had the strength to make a resolution. He didn’t want simply to survive but to progress, to achieve power and sway over the community; to make everyone listen to what he had to say and carry out his orders without question. He did not believe in meaningless dreams, only in realistic plans, which appeared to be in jeopardy.
In addition to settling his long-held grievance against his brother, he meant to find a way to succeed in his political ambitions. If this was not to be through a union then he’d find some other way, whatever the cost, and whoever he needed to step on in order to do so. He’d not shrink from doing whatever was necessary to achieve his own ends.
‘Can I go to the Palmy Picture-drome, Mam?’
Polly stood at the sink, hands deep in sudsy water as she rubbed a pair of socks together and considered her son’s bright face. ‘How much would that be?’
‘It’s only sixpence if you sit on the benches at the front. Or ninepence for a proper seat at the back.’
‘Is that all?’ She wiped her hands, took a purse from out of her pocket and opened it to show him. It was empty, as she had known it would be. ‘And here’s me without a penny for a pinch of tea.’ She gave him a rueful smile, ‘Mebbe next week, love, eh?’
Benny’s birthday had been two days ago, during early September, and his mother had given him a glass bobber for his marble collection. It was so big, he was sure it would win him many more. She’d also given him a lollipop to suck after his tea. Oh, it’d been a grand birthday but he knew, deep down, that marbles and lollipops were for children, and he was growing up. Benny longed to branch out and see how much more he could achieve on his own. ‘Now I’m nine, couldn’t I get a bit of a job? Earn a bit of pocket money?’
‘Ach, Benny. I promise, I’ll find sixpence for you next week.’
‘I was thinking I could be an errand boy, or happen get a job at London Road Station as a nipper, carrying people’s bags, unloading carts and such? He couldn’t disguise the eagerness in his voice. It was his dearest wish to work on the railway.
Polly looked at her son with a sadness in her eyes, knowing how sought after such jobs were these days, and how rare. ‘I reckon they might think you a touch young, m’cushla. In a year or two mebbe, when you reach twelve or thirteen. Won’t that be grand then for you to get a fine job at the station? And patting her son’s tousled head, she told him to go and play in the street and be a good boy. ‘Don’t be late home now, the nights are drawing in. And keep away from those big lads.’
He nodded, the lump that suddenly blocked his throat preventing any further attempt at persuasion. He walked stoically out of the house before his mother could catch sight of the tears he feared might show in his eyes. It was vital he get sixpence for the flicks. It was a Buster Keaton film and he was desperate to see it. All his mates were going, or most of them anyway. He didn’t want to be left out.
More importantly, he was even more desperate to join the newly formed Dove Street Gang. He’d asked them again this morning if he could become a member and they’d laughed, telling him he was still too young, that you had to have money in your pocket to prove you were a man. He was already sick of being nine. It was scarcely any better than being eight.
And it seemed so unfair for he knew that once they let him in, he’d learn all the gang’s secret passwords and the codes they used to send messages to each other, and also gain some protection from the other marauding gangs like Georgie Eastwood’s lot who continued to pester him. He might even learn where the good part-time jobs were to be found, who to see to get one and what to say, which he really needed to know. They’d teach him other things too, of course, about girls and something called sex, but Benny wasn’t interested in girls. Girlfriends were for cissies. He wasn’t ever going to get married, not if he could help it - except perhaps to Mary Alice Ferguson who could swim and dive amongst the rubbish in Rochdale canal as well as any lad. Not that they were supposed to swim in the canal and his dad would leather him if he ever found out. They always went in behind the electricity works, because the water was warm there from the waste they pumped in; much better than Philips Park open air baths which were always freezing.
Aw, but he did want to work on the railways! He’d consulted his friends, Liam, Joe and Don. They were eleven and already in the gang. They’d told him to get hold of sixpence, or better still ninepence for the flicks, and then the rest would agree to let him in.
‘Did yet get it?’ Liam asked now as Benny came back out into the street. Mournfully, he shook his head.
‘What’re you going to do?’
‘I don’t know.’ The four boys began to walk dejectedly up the street. ‘We could sneak you in with us?’ they suggested, but Benny shook his head.
‘Too risky. That Mr Spaghetti, or whatever his name is, would catch me and give me a walloping. How’ll I ever get in the gang if I never have any money?’
They turned a corner and walked almost smack bang into Georgie East-wood. He seemed bigger than ever at such close quarters. and had his pack of loyal henchmen close behind.
‘No money, eh? Well, well. There’s ways and means round that one. You have to use your wits - if you have any. Let’s see. . .’ And snatching the blue peaked cap from Benny’s head, he tossed it to one of his mates who immediately threw it to another member of the gang. They played catch with it, high above his head. Red in the face, Benny ran from one to the other in helpless rage, desperate to rescue the cap before they flung it in the canal.
‘Give it ‘ere! That’s mine.’ His mam would kill him if he lost it.
Georgie grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and pushed him up against the brick wall of the ginnel, leaning so close Benny had to suffer his stinking breath. ‘Go on then, what’ll you do if I don’t?’ He gave Benny a push, sending him spinning, only for him to be caught by one of the other lads and tossed back again, like a top being whipped just fast enough to keep it moving. It went on for so long, back and forth, Benny began to feel dizzy and sick. The gang were all laughing at him, as if it were a great joke.
‘Have you got them sweets we asked for?’ Miserably, he shook his head.
He tried to run then, but Georgie grasped hold of his braces so all that happened was that he ran on the spot, like one of those daft cartoons he’d seen at the pictures.
‘Then it’s time you did - if you know what’s good for yer.’ A final push sent him into a puddle where Benny fell to his knees, right next to his cap. ‘When you’re man enough, you can join a proper gang. Not this miserable shower,’ Georgie said, indicating the three boys huddled together some distance away. Then hitching up his trousers with the wide leather belt, he went on his way, whistling.
‘Thanks a lot,’ said Benny, rubbing mud off his knees and wringing water out of his cap. ‘Lot of use you were.’
The three exchanged glances ripe with guilt. ‘Forget him, he’s not important. We were going to the flicks, remember,’ said Liam.
‘You mean, you were going,’ Benny dolefully reminded him. The four boys stood looking at each other for a long miserable moment, each embarrassed by the incident and not quite knowing how to save face.
‘I’ve an idea,’ said Joe. ‘Follow me.’ He winked, then started knocking at doors. Each time a woman appeared, he’d ask, ‘Any jam jars, missus? We’re collecting for the poor.’
‘Get off with you,’ was the usual response. Or, ‘Get to your own end o’ t’street, you little heathens.’
‘But we’re not,’ Benny protested. ‘Not what?’
‘Collecting for the poor.’
‘Aye, we are. You’re poor, aren’t you?’
Benny nodded.
‘There you are then.’
He still looked doubtful but then they reached the house of Daft Betty. Everyone knew Daft Betty wasn’t all there. Harmless enough, and always good for a laugh, but soft in the head. She lived with her sister Nellie, who watched out for her like a hawk. Nobody messed with Nellie Sidebottom. The boys waited until they saw Nellie go out, basket on her arm, shawl pinned tightly about her head. She was off to market and wouldn’t be back for an hour if they were lucky.
Liam nudged Benny in the ribs. ‘Go on, it’s you what wants to join. Get on with it. Live by your wits, like Georgie said.’
Benny swallowed, then tapped gently on the door. Betty came at once, all sunny smiles on her friendly round face. ‘Hello, Betty,’ he said. ‘We’re collecting jam jars for the poor. Do you have any?’ Betty had. Giggling, she led them into the back kitchen and showed them the darkest corner of Nellie’s cupboard where several jam jars were carefully stacked, waiting to be taken back to the shop.
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