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John Henry (everyone but his wife called him "Jack") Knowles was born April
18, 1873 in or near Kates Hill in Dudley, Worcestershire. His father was William Henry Knowles.
At some point the family moved to Hednesford, a coal-mining village outside the town of Cannock, Staffordshire.
Hednesford is pronounced "Hedge-foot" by the locals. In 1891 John Henry married Esther Perry
(written as "Paddy" on one surviving document, for reasons unknown), of Hednesford, born May
16, 1875. "The prettiest wench in Hedge-foot," Jack called her.They had thirteen children: Eliza, Laura, Bill, Sally, Joe, Nell, Jack, Winifred, Harold, Ernest, Esther, Elsie and Muriel. Ernest died of illness at age nine or ten; Elsie died by accident when still a baby. The other eleven all lived into old age. Joe died at 73 or 74; I believe the others all made it past 80.
Jack Knowles was an only child.
His mother's name was
Sarah
J. Hadlington, born 1854.. The Hadlingtons came from Kates
Hill (now a district of Dudley, in Worcestershire), where they had had a "butty mine"
— i.e. a small deposit of coal on their own land, which they had been able to dig out and sell to their neighbors.
When this little deposit ("just a hole in the ground"
— Muriel) was exhausted, they moved to
Staffordshire. Grandad's mother had a much younger brother,
Jack Hadlington, who was only
four years older than her son.
It was Jack Hadlington who first "took Grandad down the pit," i.e. introduced him to coal-mining work, circa 1887.
Before that Grandad worked minding cattle on Hednesford Hills for twopence a week (about three U.S. cents at that time).In contrast to Grandad Derbyshire, Jack Knowles seems to have been loved by everyone who knew him. He was an Englishman made in the ancient mold: honest, fearless, sociable, and devoted to drinking, sport, gambling and singing. His drinking was social and not vicious, as Grandad Derbyshire's seems to have been. He was a beer drinker, and in old age patronized a pub called the Jubilee. They kept a special glass tankard for him there; and when he died, the landlord of the Jubilee ceremonially smashed Jack Knowles's tankard. (So I was always told; but Cousin Terry Knowles says this is a myth.) His gambling was chronic. "Any time he got any money, he gambled it away" — Mother. I can remember seeing him hunched over his old radio set — it delivered nothing but static, so far as my infant ear could tell — listening to the racing results. He bet on the jockeys, according to Auntie Muriel, not the horses. He sang a pleasant bass baritone, and in my memories of him seems always to have been singing. His children and grandchildren all adored him. I fancy that he specially favored me, as being his last grandchild. Certainly I never heard a disagreeable word from him, directed to me or anyone else. Mum: "I never heard my father raise his voice. If we were exceptionally naughty, Mother would appeal to him to discipline us. Dad would give us a look from over his newspaper and say: 'Why doesn't yo listen to yer mother.' That was it."
Here is a story about Grandad Knowles. Sometime in the mid-1890s, just after Uncle Bill was born, Grandad was walking home from the night shift along a lane between two hedgerows. It was early morning and there was no-one much about. However, the hunt was running after a fox from Cannock Chase. Grandad saw the fox come under a five-barred gate set in the hedgerow, shoot across the road, and disappear under the opposite hedge. "Good luck to yo, Reynard," said Grandad to the fox. Then up came the hunt. Unwilling to jump the gate on to a metaled road, they stopped. "You there. Open this gate!" called out the master; and Grandad saw that it was in fact Lord Littleton, who owned most of the land thereabouts, including the land the collieries were on, and the collieries themselves. By no means intimidated, Grandad called back: "Open the gate yoself. Yo's hands, hasn't yo?" Lord Littleton took this amiss. He called someone to open the gate, then went after Grandad. Of course, he could see Grandad was a collier. There were no pithead baths in those days, and a collier went home covered in coal dust. "Which of my collieries do you work at?" asked Lord Littleton. "West Cannock Number Three," said Grandad. "Well, you'll work there no more." Sure enough, when Grandad turned up for work the next night the foreman shook his head and said: "Yo's got yoself in trouble now, our Jack." He was out of work for some months, and had to live by poaching. Some weeks later there was a pit fire and he was called in to help put it out. "Relays of men crawling behind iron trucks, each man dashing forward to put a shovelful of burning coal into the truck, then going behind the relay again. All for ninepence a truck." (Muriel.)
Oh, the first to come in was a mason.
He was a very fine person.
He was a very fine person
To join the noble crew.
Well, he smashed his hammer against the wall,
And prayed all the churches and chapels to fall,
And then there'd be work for the masons all!
And then the kegs of beer rolled in -
When Thompson's ales were new, my boys
When Thompson's ales were new.
The next to come in was a soldier.
He was much bigger and bolder.
He was much bigger and bolder
And joined the noble crew.
The landlady's daughter, she came in
And he kissed her between the nose and chin....
And I forget the rest. His favorite song was "There is a Tavern in the Town".
There is a tavern in the town, in the town,
And there my dear love sits him down, sits him down
And drinks his wine 'mid laughter free
And never, never thinks of me.
Chorus:
Fare thee well, for I must leave thee.
Do not let this parting grieve thee.
And remember that the best of friends must part, part part.
Adieu, adieu, kind friends, adieu, adieu, adieu.
I can no longer stay with you, stay with you-ou.
I'ii hang my harp on the weeping willow tree,
And may the world go well with thee.
Oh! dig my grave both wide and deep, wide and deep,
Put tombstones at my head and feet, head and feet,
And on my breast carve a turtle dove
To signify I died of love.
Chorus:
Fare thee well etc.
This was an Edwardian music-hall ballad. So were the very sentimental songs about death, of which he had one for every possible occasion. There was "I Want to Telephone to Mother Dear", in which a waif makes his first phone call, presumably to the operator (these songs always came with a spoken intro):
I want to telephone to Mother Dear.
She's somewhere in the sky so high.
She's been gone such a long, long while.
You don't know how I miss her loving smile.
I can't tell you what her number is,
But it's somewhere in the sky.
I want to hear
Her voice so dear
As I used to in the days gone by.
And another poor orphan on tiptoe at the railroad station ticket window:
Give me a ticket to Heaven, please.
That's where Dad's gone, they say.
He'll be so lonely without me
Travelling all that way.
My mother died when I was born, Sir.
And left Dad and me all alone.
So give me a ticket to Heaven, please,
Before the last train has gone.
The Victorians and Edwardians loved that kind of thing. Our great favorite was Will Geddes's "Don't Go Down in the Mine, Dad," the words and sheet music of which I have put on a separate page.
In his prime, Grandad was what they called a check-weighman. This meant that he was head of a gang who would contract with the colliery to cut so much coal a day. The check-weighman would be paid by the colliery, and it was up to him to distribute the money fairly among his mates. In later years, I suppose when he could no longer do the hard work of coal-cutting, Grandad was set to look after the pit ponies. These creatures were used to haul the wagons of coal from the face to the shaft. They were kept underground all the time, and I think blinded after birth to accustom them to the darkness underground. (This is the meaning of "wretched blind pit ponies" in Ralph Hodgson's poem "The Bells of Heaven".) I doubt if Grandad Knowles ever earned more than two pounds a week from colliery work — small rations to raise thirteen kids on, though he supplemented his income by poaching and bookmaking, both illegal.
On May 27th 1915 — i.e. quite early on in the Great War — Grandad enlisted while drunk one day. He was over forty; but miners were in demand for their tunneling skills, as one of the techniques used to break through enemy lines was to tunnel under the lines, fill the tunnel with high explosive, and set it off. The idea was that in the ensuing chaos the side that had set the mine could charge through the breach into the open country behind the lines. This seems never to have worked, but they kept doing it anyway. Grandad's service was short: just seven months. He was discharged on December 23rd 1915 as "not likely to become an efficient soldier (on medical grounds)". All that survives of his military service is a very touching letter he wrote from the Front.
Mother told me one of her earliest memories was of sitting on Grandma's bed just after Muriel was born. Grandma was eating "pob" (a kind of gruel made from bread, milk and sugar — Mother used to give it to us when we were ill, too); and Grandad was in his army uniform, presumably having just come home from the war. This must have been a confused memory, however, as Grandad was discharged a year and a half before Muriel was born.
[Note added July 2003: A friend, reading this, did a
little research and came up with an
explanation for the "pig on the wall" remark. It dates
from the first swimming of the English Channel, by Captain Matthew Webb, a
Shropshireman. "News of Matthew Webb's amazing feat filtered back to his home community here in Shropshire, he returned in triumph and arriving at Wellington railway station was met by large crowds of locals, eager to share in the glory and heap deserved praise on their own Local Hero.
It is known that he was escorted back to Dawley amid a carnival atmosphere boosted by the able ability of the Shifnal Brass Band.
The journey itself was to spawn endless tales of folklore. Arriving as we have into the new Millennium and the year 2000, locals to this day, 125 years on, still refer to The Pig On The Wall.
Legend has it that as the Band led Webb's procession into Dawley, a pig placed its front trotters onto the wall of its sty, to watch the band pass by.]
Speaking of Grandad to Cousin Terry, Terry reminded me of Grandad's box
— a wooden box kept next to the fireplace, by
his chair in the Princess Street cottage. In the box Grandad kept his betting slips, his pocket money, and a supply of candy.
We little ones got a candy from the box now and again, when we'd been exceptionally good.
Grandma Knowles was originally Esther Perry or Paddy (the family seems to have used both names), born May
16, 1874, died April 18th 1961 at age 86. Grandma's people were a bit above Grandad's, and I think she married him (at sixteen
— he was eighteen) against some opposition from her family.
She was the youngest of three daughters of John Paddy (or Perry), born 1841, died December 12th 1915.
Her mother was called Mary Ann, but no-one seems to know the surname.
Someone in her father or grandfather's generation was governor of Strangeways Prison in Manchester.
There is a shadowy rumor of a high-born Spanish lady in this line of the family, who came over in a ship with a battalion of servants. "And that's why we have dark eyes," Mother used to say. "It's the Spanish blood." (Everybody in my father's family had blue
eyes. Muriel, by the way, disputes the "Spanish."
She says the mystery lady was Javanese.) Granny's sisters were Leah Beatrice and Eliza. Great-Aunt Leah, dates uncertain, married one Henry Spencer, born 1878, died May 2nd 1931. They had three children: John Richard (born 1899, died October 15th 1919), Louie (born 1908, died March 28th 1921) and Ernest (died 1982). Louie was a girl — when she died, my mother was given all her clothes and toys. Ernest became a famous runner. He married a girl called Violet and they had a daughter, Maureen. Ernest joined the Navy in World War II as a radar technician, and was badly injured somehow — at Dunkirk, according to Muriel.
Eliza married one Henry Plant. They had two children, Henry Junior and Annie. Henry Junior had two children, Dorothy and Harry. Annie married a Thomas Norwood and had children Esther, Tom and Annie Junior.
Great-Aunt Leah also had an illegitimate child (called a "by-blow" in Staffordshire); a daughter, Mary Ann Junior. This was the result of a union with a red-headed sailor. When Great-Aunt Leah's family found out about her condition they went looking for the sailor, going as far as Liverpool, but they never found him. I knew Mary Ann well as "Auntie Annie". More about Annie in Muriel's page.
The only other thing we know about Grandma Knowles's family is that she had an aunt called Lizzie Pickens, who begat a tribe of footballers — her grandson, Tommy Galley, played for Wolverhampton Wanderers in the 1940s and 50s. Cousin Terry recalls being taken to see him play. Lizzie's daughter was in show biz — she trod the boards with Florrie Ford, a music-hall star.
I can remember the Princess Street cottage very clearly. We — Mum, Judy and I — used to stay there every year at Easter, riding up from Northampton in the train. As the train got up into the Black Country of Warwickshire and Staffordshire you started to see slag heaps — great conical piles of coaly mud and soil brought up by the mine workings. Because of their coal content, these slag heaps were permanently on fire, or at any rate smouldering, and at night were covered with thin flickering blue flames — a spectacular sight from a train window, when you are four or five years old.
The cottage had only one bedroom. There was a parlor at the front with a big fireplace (everybody burned coal in those days). Next to the parlor was a small kitchen. Behind it was Grandma and Grandad's bedroom, with an old-fashioned brass bed, whose round knobs could be screwed off by curious small boys. Alongside the bedroom was a bathroom. I used to sleep on the bath, which always thrilled me. Grandad set wooden boards across the top and made up a bed on them. Mum and Judy slept on a sofa-bed in the parlor. Behind the house was a large garden with black soil full of large round white stones. Beyond the garden was an open area of waste ground. A deep cutting ran across this waste ground, carrying the narrow railway for coal trucks to and from a nearby pit. A sports stadium was built on the waste ground to commemorate the Festival of Britain in 1951 — Cousin Terry went to the opening day. On the other side of this waste ground (which I confused in my mind with Cannock Chase, a far wilder and more extensive affair) lived Auntie Sally with her husband Fred and daughter Freda. You could see the cottage from Sally's house.
Every evening Grandad would walk to a nearby pub, the Jubilee, to drink and play dominoes or cribbage with his mates. I was always asleep when he came home, of course; but he would leave a packet of "crisps" (= potato chips) on the boards by my head, for me to find when I woke up in the morning. In those days your crisps came with a tiny blue waxed-paper bag of salt included. He also used to let me play with his dominoes, which he kept in a wooden box with a sliding lid. I didn't know how to play dominoes, but I liked to pile them up two by two in little towers. I used to like being at the cottage. Grandad would sing to me. Then he would eat a dish of cucumber slices in vinegar. (This concoction was also a favorite of President Ulysses S. Grant.) Grandma drank tea all the time. She kept her tea in a pretty little tin. She couldn't drink out of a cup, though, because her hands were shaky. Instead, she drank from a saucer.
Sometimes my uncles, aunts or cousins would visit with us at the cottage. Most often, I think, it was Aunt Muriel and Uncle Fred. But Uncle Bill and Auntie Gladys used to come a lot from Wolverhampton, and Uncle Harold and Auntie Win. Actually, of the eleven Knowles children who survived childhood, I only really ever knew half. Some lived in inconvenient places; some had fallen out with others; and some just weren't sociable.