BEYOND THE NETTY DOOR
Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2009 4:43 pm
The book I am writing is getting near completion. Here is a couple of pages as a preview for the people who have shown an interest in it and I hope of interest to others.
CHAPTER ONE
Edith Street, South Shields, 14, August 1949. What a bloody dump! Of course I didn’t know this at the time. At the time I did not know anything. At the time I did not know how to swear. Why? Because this was when and where I was born. 138 Edith Street to be precise. Young and innocent I was and I guess born lucky. The reason being that by the time I was old enough to take in the situation around me and recognise just what a dump I was born in, my parents moved. For the time being I was living in a downstairs flat in a row of terraced houses on the Lawe Top, below the family that lived upstairs, who I never personally got to know.
Sharing the family home with me was my mother, father and my brother Denis who was eighteen months older than me. Denis was my mother’s favourite before I was born and still remained her favourite after I was born. He is now his own favourite person, but more about him later.
I must have been a very important personage on the day I was born. First off the government wanted to know all about me because my mother had to go to Barrington Street, where they had their registry office, to give them my name and all the details concerning my birth. I was also given an ‘Identity Card’ from the government just in case people did not know how important I was. The church also wanted to know all about me and they also made sure that I was clean by giving me a bath, well wet me a little bit. This was done at St. Stephens Church in Mile End Road, just around the corner from where I was born. They called it a Christening but that was also something else I did not know at the time.
A Mr. Westhead of St Vincent Street was very pleased at my birth. He was my mother’s Insurance man. He worked for the Co-operative Insurance Society, which had an office at 60 King Street. He thought I was so valuable that he told my mother that she ought to insure me straight away without any delay, this she duly did at 2s 8d per month.
Edith Street was a row of terraced upstairs and downstairs flats that had seen much better days before I was born. It was situated on what is called the Lawe Top and was about one street away from the river Tyne. The place had character, it was said, but what does character mean? In those days on the Lawe Top ‘character’ must have meant cobbled streets with dirty kids playing in the gutter. Dirty working men coming home from the mines. Dirty dock-workers coming home from work. (Some of these workers were dirty before they went off to work in the morning.) Dirty old men staggering from the pubs with what my mother called ‘dirty women’. Dirty back lanes. Dirty corner shops with food and flies on display in the window to whet your appetite to come in and buy. To go with all this dirt you had a great view over the great big dirty river Tyne. You could say that the Lawe Top was dirty, but it would be a risky thing to say in front of any ‘skitender’ (a term used for any person born or living on the Lawe Top). Me, I don’t care, or as Rhet Butler said in the film ‘Gone with The Wind’ “Frankly I don’t give a damn.” So if ‘character’ meant dirt, then indeed, at that time, the Lawe Top definitely had lots of ‘character’.
Amongst all this dirt, sorry I mean character, some of the women, stood out proud and clean. To prove this they would be out every other day scrubbing their doorstep and cleaning the front door. Everyone knew that a clean doorstep and front door meant a clean house. This was not always the case and some women would say of others ‘she is all skirt and no knickers’ meaning her house looked clean on the outside but was filthy on the inside. But I believe, on the whole, everybody did try and keep a clean house, with the dirty ones being the exception.
Another place that was scrubbed clean and whitewashed on a regular basis was the ‘netty’. (The toilet in the back yard.) A dirty netty meant a dirty house. The ‘netty’ was a pride and joy to some people. A clean netty was a status symbol and if you had lino on the netty floor then it was fit for the Queen to sit in. Some people even put flowers in their netty, but most believed that that was going too far, ‘getting a bit above yourself’ they would say. Toilet paper was practically unheard of, instead newspaper would be cut up into little squares and hung on a hook attached to the wall. Even here though there seemed to be a hierarchy. Most people used the local newspaper the Gazette, but others would use a higher-class newspaper, which they may buy or get from other people. The worst ones were those that used to use the magazines that they had obtained from the doctor or dentist’s waiting rooms. Only the better magazine would do of course, despite the high gloss paper that was virtually useless for what you intended to use it for. The outside toilet, sometimes there was only one, which was shared between the two tenants, was a cold, damp, dingy place in the winter and a really smelly place in the summer heat. Also in the summer there were the flies to contend with. You would be sitting there swatting them like mad or trying to chase them out of the gap at the top of the door or the bottom of the door, whilst trying to keep your balance on the seat. Most doors had, for ventilation purposes, a large gap at the top and bottom. In the time I am writing about there was the luxury of having a flush to the toilet, before this you just s**t on ashes, a dry closet they called it, but lets not dwell too much on the subject. Going to the toilet in the middle of the night was nigh impossible. First the back door had to be unlocked, then a candle would have to be lit to see your way across the yard. If it was rainy and windy the candle would invariably be blown out, necessitating you having to go back in to light it. There were also the ghosts to worry about. Ghosts always hung around the back yard at night. When you finally reached the toilet and had locked yourself in you were safe from the ghosts but not the spiders. The toilet spider always came out at night just waiting to drop on you in the middle of your business. It was at this point that you worshipped the potty under the bed, also known as the chamber pot, where you could do your business in the safety of the bedroom. Yes, it took a brave person to go to the outside toilet at night. Mind you, in the morning the potty was regarded with loathing when it came to emptying the thing. If you looked out your back upstairs window early in the morning you would see, as you looked over the back yards, a procession of people carrying these potties to the toilet and you would hear the swoosh of the contents being emptied and then the flush of the toilet itself. A proper symphony this was. What you could call chamber music. The whole toilet business was a nightmare, both day and night.
When you entered the front door of the houses the insides were basically the same, with the same dirt from the big smoky open fire ranges. Damp, with washing hanging from every nook and cranny trying to dry, giving moist air of dampness to the whole place. Old carpets that had the life beaten the hell out of them by trying to remove the ever-present dust and the ever-present life living in them. There always seemed to be a constant battle with dirt going on. Some people were fighting it every day. Some people just gave up. You could say that if you looked beyond the netty door you would be in for a shock in more ways than one.
comeonthen
CHAPTER ONE
Edith Street, South Shields, 14, August 1949. What a bloody dump! Of course I didn’t know this at the time. At the time I did not know anything. At the time I did not know how to swear. Why? Because this was when and where I was born. 138 Edith Street to be precise. Young and innocent I was and I guess born lucky. The reason being that by the time I was old enough to take in the situation around me and recognise just what a dump I was born in, my parents moved. For the time being I was living in a downstairs flat in a row of terraced houses on the Lawe Top, below the family that lived upstairs, who I never personally got to know.
Sharing the family home with me was my mother, father and my brother Denis who was eighteen months older than me. Denis was my mother’s favourite before I was born and still remained her favourite after I was born. He is now his own favourite person, but more about him later.
I must have been a very important personage on the day I was born. First off the government wanted to know all about me because my mother had to go to Barrington Street, where they had their registry office, to give them my name and all the details concerning my birth. I was also given an ‘Identity Card’ from the government just in case people did not know how important I was. The church also wanted to know all about me and they also made sure that I was clean by giving me a bath, well wet me a little bit. This was done at St. Stephens Church in Mile End Road, just around the corner from where I was born. They called it a Christening but that was also something else I did not know at the time.
A Mr. Westhead of St Vincent Street was very pleased at my birth. He was my mother’s Insurance man. He worked for the Co-operative Insurance Society, which had an office at 60 King Street. He thought I was so valuable that he told my mother that she ought to insure me straight away without any delay, this she duly did at 2s 8d per month.
Edith Street was a row of terraced upstairs and downstairs flats that had seen much better days before I was born. It was situated on what is called the Lawe Top and was about one street away from the river Tyne. The place had character, it was said, but what does character mean? In those days on the Lawe Top ‘character’ must have meant cobbled streets with dirty kids playing in the gutter. Dirty working men coming home from the mines. Dirty dock-workers coming home from work. (Some of these workers were dirty before they went off to work in the morning.) Dirty old men staggering from the pubs with what my mother called ‘dirty women’. Dirty back lanes. Dirty corner shops with food and flies on display in the window to whet your appetite to come in and buy. To go with all this dirt you had a great view over the great big dirty river Tyne. You could say that the Lawe Top was dirty, but it would be a risky thing to say in front of any ‘skitender’ (a term used for any person born or living on the Lawe Top). Me, I don’t care, or as Rhet Butler said in the film ‘Gone with The Wind’ “Frankly I don’t give a damn.” So if ‘character’ meant dirt, then indeed, at that time, the Lawe Top definitely had lots of ‘character’.
Amongst all this dirt, sorry I mean character, some of the women, stood out proud and clean. To prove this they would be out every other day scrubbing their doorstep and cleaning the front door. Everyone knew that a clean doorstep and front door meant a clean house. This was not always the case and some women would say of others ‘she is all skirt and no knickers’ meaning her house looked clean on the outside but was filthy on the inside. But I believe, on the whole, everybody did try and keep a clean house, with the dirty ones being the exception.
Another place that was scrubbed clean and whitewashed on a regular basis was the ‘netty’. (The toilet in the back yard.) A dirty netty meant a dirty house. The ‘netty’ was a pride and joy to some people. A clean netty was a status symbol and if you had lino on the netty floor then it was fit for the Queen to sit in. Some people even put flowers in their netty, but most believed that that was going too far, ‘getting a bit above yourself’ they would say. Toilet paper was practically unheard of, instead newspaper would be cut up into little squares and hung on a hook attached to the wall. Even here though there seemed to be a hierarchy. Most people used the local newspaper the Gazette, but others would use a higher-class newspaper, which they may buy or get from other people. The worst ones were those that used to use the magazines that they had obtained from the doctor or dentist’s waiting rooms. Only the better magazine would do of course, despite the high gloss paper that was virtually useless for what you intended to use it for. The outside toilet, sometimes there was only one, which was shared between the two tenants, was a cold, damp, dingy place in the winter and a really smelly place in the summer heat. Also in the summer there were the flies to contend with. You would be sitting there swatting them like mad or trying to chase them out of the gap at the top of the door or the bottom of the door, whilst trying to keep your balance on the seat. Most doors had, for ventilation purposes, a large gap at the top and bottom. In the time I am writing about there was the luxury of having a flush to the toilet, before this you just s**t on ashes, a dry closet they called it, but lets not dwell too much on the subject. Going to the toilet in the middle of the night was nigh impossible. First the back door had to be unlocked, then a candle would have to be lit to see your way across the yard. If it was rainy and windy the candle would invariably be blown out, necessitating you having to go back in to light it. There were also the ghosts to worry about. Ghosts always hung around the back yard at night. When you finally reached the toilet and had locked yourself in you were safe from the ghosts but not the spiders. The toilet spider always came out at night just waiting to drop on you in the middle of your business. It was at this point that you worshipped the potty under the bed, also known as the chamber pot, where you could do your business in the safety of the bedroom. Yes, it took a brave person to go to the outside toilet at night. Mind you, in the morning the potty was regarded with loathing when it came to emptying the thing. If you looked out your back upstairs window early in the morning you would see, as you looked over the back yards, a procession of people carrying these potties to the toilet and you would hear the swoosh of the contents being emptied and then the flush of the toilet itself. A proper symphony this was. What you could call chamber music. The whole toilet business was a nightmare, both day and night.
When you entered the front door of the houses the insides were basically the same, with the same dirt from the big smoky open fire ranges. Damp, with washing hanging from every nook and cranny trying to dry, giving moist air of dampness to the whole place. Old carpets that had the life beaten the hell out of them by trying to remove the ever-present dust and the ever-present life living in them. There always seemed to be a constant battle with dirt going on. Some people were fighting it every day. Some people just gave up. You could say that if you looked beyond the netty door you would be in for a shock in more ways than one.
comeonthen