anonymous woman

School - paid a penny a week. Clothes. Brothers became mechanics like father. Sunday school and missions for the poor. House - buying paraffin for lamps. Strictness and punctuality in school. Knitting socks for soldiers, world war one. Washing. Worked in a fruiterers shop when at school and after. Working in a pub on Scotswood Road. Fish sold from door to door and method of cooking. Working at the pub. Gateshead bottle bank. Sister worked for a vets. Sorting through bottles on the quayside. A theft on Scotswood road. Poor people on quayside. Travel across the High Level bridge. Beggar Tommy on the bridge, people fooling him. "Silly" people selling sticks for starting fires. Watching judge at castle garth, someone hanged for murder.

Location: Gateshead, Newcastle
County: Tyne and Wear
AUD1991-68

---

Transcript of audio:
Tommy on the Bridge used to stand on the bridge, you know, shaking back and forwards and he used to have a tin pot. The ropery was just near the bottom of the High Street. The lasses out of the ropery, they were rough, they didn't care if it snowed. Well they used to torment him you know. They used to have their money on a string or something and they used to drop it in his tin pot and draw it out again. And he used to think he was getting money. He was blind. I remember his funeral.

• Add a comment