Never goo to weddin’s

An interview with George Hackett 1896 – 1992

Tell me about where you were born, your parents and your siblings

I was born on the 15^th October, 1896 at Comberford near Tamworth and I was the eldest of six children. My father was John but he was always known as Jack of course and he worked as a gardener in a number of big houses in Staffordshire. In 1900 when I was three years old we moved to Brereton where my dad looked after the garden at the Big House working for Mr. Robinson, the manager at the pit. After Mr. Robinson retired we moved to Armitage and my dad worked for Mrs. Corns at The Mount where he was paid £1 per week.  

We weren’t thrilled at the idea of moving to a mid-terrace house in Old Road, Armitage – Dad had told us that when he was a young chap he fetched coal with a horse and trap from Armitage railway sidings and he was really frightened to go through Handsacre. Because he was a stranger the youths would want to fight him. It was a noted place for it’s pub fighters and poachers.They were a rough lot!

When war broke out Mr. Corns dropped his wages to 16s per week so dad went to work for Mr. Gardner at the Towers and we moved into the cottage that went with the job. Mum was Priscilla and she always had a dread that we would go to work down the pit so when I left school at 13 she arranged for me to work on a farm in Stafford.

Was life tough growing up?

We never thought so but looking back now, I suppose it was. We never had any toys but we made our own entertainment. We used to cut up a swede and pretend we were butchers, things like that. On Saturday nights Dad would bath us all in front of the fire, in the wooden half tub. Then he would clean our one pair of shoes for Sunday school next day.

And of course we got up to the normal mischief, like scrumping – there was never a sweeter apple than a scrumped one. I always preferred the apples from Phillips’ orchard up Armitage Lane but my brother swore by old Georgie Dawson’s apples. George always saved his apples for the harvest festival and got upset when they were scrumped, saying he was saving them for the Lord and the devil fetched them.

We got up to various tricks but no-one got hurt – it was all good clean fun. We used a pin and button and fastened the pin into the window frame, the button hanging down against the glass. We would run out the cotton to where we were hid and keep pulling on the cotton, thus tapping the window pane with the button. Another trick we had was throwing pebbles at a window and then dropping a pane of glass. A trick that caused a stir was lighting some paper in a drainpipe – didn’t it roar.

We seldom got any money to spend but if we got a halfpenny we could go and buy some sweets. There were everlasting sticks, paregoric knobs, [you might know them better as Army & Navy traditional, old-fashioned, sugar-coated hard-boiled sweets], and liquorice straps. The best buy was the halfpenny lucky bag – a “monkey up a stick”, a sugar mouse, small bag of Kali, a proverb and a paper cap.

Your family were all chapel folk, weren’t they? What do you remember about that when you were growing up?

Yes, we’re Methodists. I often wondered how the old preachers got to chapel to preach from as far away as Stafford and beyond. I cannot remember ever seeing one brought in a horse-drawn vehicle and of course there were no cars then. I daresay it would have been thought unchristian to use a pony vehicle to go preaching on the Sabbath – and they did not mind walking long distances.

Georgie Dawson was a well-known member at Handsacre Primitive Methodist Chapel and a good man too. He used to get so excited and if a preacher started telling humorous stories, George would shout out: “We’ve had enough of that, let’s have the Gospel.”

For a summer treat we were taken in a canal barge drawn by a horse to Seven Springs. The boat had been washed clean and seats from the chapel were put in it. Buntings and flowers completed the decorations and we had sing-songs along the way. When we got to Severn Springs we had our ‘bun struggle’ as it was called and then races and other entertainment until it was time to go home. Great days.

Anniversary Sunday was another big highlight. There was never enough room on the platform for all the children to get on and sit down. The girls on the left side had to be dressed all in white with the only colour a buttonhole flower. Us boys sat on the right with big, starched collars and dickie bow ties and knickerbocker breeches – never would you see loose bottom trousers on the boys.

What was it like when you first moved to Armitage?

The first Sunday that we were living in Armitage my brother and I went out for a walk in the afternoon and met up with three Armitage youths, Tom Cooke, Harry Carthy and David Johnson.

We went along the cut-side and seeing a cork floating in the water we picked up a few stones from the path and started to throw them at the cork. The bobby from Brereton, in plain clothes, took our names and we were summoned to court at Rugeley for throwing stones in the canal.

The lengthman said he had missed two barrow loads of stones from the path – also said it was possible that we might have stopped the passage of boats. [Canal lengthmen were responsible for repair and maintenance of lengths of towpath and banks on their “length”, including cutting reeds and vegetation and treading puddle clay into sections of bank which were weak or suffering from leakage].

The curate went and pleaded at court for us but we were fined 2s 6d each, the magistrate telling us we must be good boys in future. After this we had no problem being accepted by the local children.

Do you remember any particular characters from the villages?

There were certainly plenty of them, like Bill Hodgkiss who told me a story of how he and a couple of others were coming back from a drinking spree at Abbots Bromley and the ground “kept coming up and hitting them”. There were three Marklews at Handsacre. Jack used to travel the boar pig from farm to farm. He was a very small man with the nickname Spaniel. Albert Goodall used to be the odd man about the village and it was said that he could kill a rat with his mouth but I never seen him do it.

But the one who particularly springs to mind is Nobby Clarke who lived at the best end of Longley Common. He had a smallholding down there and he lent me his solid tyre boneshaker bike to learn on. The gear was so small that you could only go at a snail’s pace.

He often had a tale to tell and one day he said: “Come here lad, I’ve got summat to tell thee and it ain’t going to cos thee ow’t. You know I’ve had the expayreance, I’ve peed for my larning and I’m going to gie it thee for now’t. Never thee goo to weddin’s lad, when thee goo’st to weddin’s lad thee cos’ner get a good fade, thay am all on the same game, they will lave now’t for thee, lad. Always goo to funerals lad, when thee goo’st to funerals thee can’st get a good fade, they be all waping their eyes they conna see what thee’st getting down thee. Be ruled with an old fool for once, lad, I’ve peed for my larning, lad. I’ve had the expareance, lad”

George lived in the village from 1910 until after his wife died in 1962. His death is recorded in Bideford, Devon in 1992. In the late 70s the Rugeley Times had an occasional column from him, about twelve in all and the above story uses information from his stories together with some additional research.