Connections: A Family History

"James Evans, my father was born in 1868 in Dawlish, Shropshire and he always said Dr Webb (Capt. Webb's father) brought him into the world. He was the son of John Thomas and Hannah Maria Evans who came to Rawmarsh in the 1880s from Dawlish with his four children: James, Jack, Reuben and Charlotte. Both grandparents died within a day of each other at a house in Victoria Road, Parkgate. John was aged 84.  (Ed In the 1911 census we learn that Jim and Sarah had been married 21 years and had had 11 children, two of whom had died.)

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In 1926 during the strike, my old man used to take me coal picking on Stubbin Tip. I was only eight at the time - we used to go up Haugh Lane and down a track to Bank Cottages which was pretty steep and pulling a barrow of coal up was no Joke. He used to tie me to the barrow for two reasons - one to help him pull, the other so I couldn’t run off.

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This barrow was a home made effort about 6 feet long and three feet wide with wheels off old wringing machines or mangles as they were called. The axle was made by “Old Footit” the blacksmith at the top of Pottery Street. Funny name for anyone, but a popular one. If anything went wrong down Pottery Street where I was born, you could hear them shout his name or something like it.’

Bank Cottages was where Tommy Machin lived and in later years while working for the Coal Board at a bore-hole that went down into the old Barnsley seam, we found out, me and our George, that if you got one of Tommy’s hens and stuffed it down the hole which was about a foot in diameter. The pressure would build up and then blow the hen about 10 feet up in the air, or you could catch a hen, tuck it’s head under it’s wing, rock it a few times and it would be fast asleep. We had about six in a row one day, when he came to feed them, (but) he didn’t like it one bit. He said, “‘Ow do yer think they going to lay eggs if you keep putting them to sleep?”

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When I was fourteen I started work at New Stubbin Colliery and the and the first few days were a bit rough, the older lads used to play all kinds of tricks on you. But after a while I was as bad as the rest. I stopped at Stubbin till about 1935 and times were bad, work a week,  lake a week, listen for the buzzer at 11:30 - if it went there was no work for the afternoon shift so I packed up and got a job at Sheffield Steel Products. There I was one of seventeen in a shop which was a long place with about fifty women. I thought, “this is going to be great fun”. We were polishing and packing knives on a contract. But I think the women were more educated that miners as far as language was concerned. The money was twice as much as I’d been getting at the pit.

The only snag was after six months, the contract finished and so did I. So it was pit work again, but with a difference.In them days Pottery Street had all the mod cons, ash middins, dry closets, blackclocks and bugs. When it was hot they used to come out - the bugs I mean, and feed on you - sucking blood. If they had a feed off our old man, they’d be drunk for three days. We used to chase them up the bedroom wall with a candle. But you had to watch them - they’d turn around and blow it out.”