Post
by drapadew » Fri Jan 27, 2006 3:37 pm
Well Margaret.
It would seem that we have to wait until you have the book on 'Old Blantyre' so that I can fully do justice to the grandeur of the village.As I type this I can still smell the dung in the streets from the many horse's and cairt's we had back then.Which gets me back to the Robertson's Ginger Works,now there was a company that had a lot of horses, plus the CO-OP,and the Rag and Bone men,who just picked up all the junk of any value that you wanted to throw out and they in return give you a few pence for whatever.Between them and others there was a lot of horses around in the streets.
As a boy my dad(a miner) had a vegetable garden and quite often he would come home from work or a walk and send me or one of my brothers out to shovel up the dung from the horses for his garden.This in it's self was not uncommon.You could go out there and run into a few more kids all out there looking for the residue for their dads garden and remember I told earlier that we did in them there days run around in our bare feet,so you can imagine the state we were in.This is reality I are writing about here,I mean we are talking DUNG!.There was a instance of human excrement involved. This was all that was available through the war years,but I wont get into that.
I do hope it does not offend. I shall try and refrain from any other descriptions of this nature but in so doing I do feel it takes away from the everyday life as it was lived then.
Getting back to the streets! I should really have started with Springwells as it is the foremost point of reference when you enter into Blantyre from the East. The village next door which is basically a continuation of both is called Burnbank. Bairds Rows follows after Springwells.
Springwells was a division or scheme of Council Houses put up in the 1930s which the local council allowed you to live in at what was considered a decent rental.Today these same council houses are selling for thousands of pounds in Springwells.The council of Lanarkshire had a few good reasons for putting up these council houses,decent living and modernization in its day,but I think it was more for trying to break the hold that the owners of the mines had over our forefathers,places like where your Grandad lived Bairds Rows. My family and all of our relations were miners,There was nothing else after the mills closed down in Blantyre and most of them worked in mines and lived in Miners Rows,and even up to the late 1930 shortly before the war a control of sorts was still being felt in their every day lives. There were at least six miners Rows of houses in low and high Blantyre .This was a Serfdom.
The street your Grandfather lived on Springwell Terrace,by its name had to be a part of the Springwells region very close to the Auchinraith Mine owned by Merry's and Cunningham.There was a rather long street in its day called Auchinraith Road(and still is)which ran from the main street of Blantyre up to High Blantyre Main Street ,this ran parallel with the railway line which brought the coal from the East Kilbride area to join up at the Auchinreath junction ,which in turn met up with the railway line I have spoken about it in previous Email.The Graighead junction close to Bairds Rows and Craighead signal box where your grandfather met his death.This was a very very busy set of railway crossings in them there days.Today all are gone.
The Aucinraith pit that I am discussing is the same pit that a young relation of mine was killed, while he too was crossing the railway line to go to work.Any sign of the pit and bing (Underground refuse dug out with the coal and separated from the coal by women and boys) are all gone
Directly across the railway line and Auchinraith road stood what we the folks in Blantyre called Murrys Raws this was our version of what is the official name of the street ,which was Merrys Rows.Taken from the name of the Merrys and Cunningham Mine. Murrys Raws ran from the Auchinraith Road down to the Main Street(it is now named ELM Street)and has gone through at least two changes in the past 60years in name and house construction.Again the folks are paying big pounds for these homes(I shall be taking pictures when I am over in April).We shall find a photo of the old Raws and to a comparison.
Back to Springwells, you mentioned Robertson land Springwell where your father was born.That was indeed the same place that Nancy from Paisley mentioned.Robertson Landing was owned by the Robertson Ginger Works them with all the Horses.The Buildings ,again tenement type were facing on to the main Street.stores below and homes upstairs which you got to by going through a close to the back stairs. Toilets were outside on the landings.
Robertsons Ginger Works was a very large employer of the women from Blantyre,probably about 60% of the working staff were women.I had relations working here also.You may have noticed that the name given to the works has a reference to Ginger. Again us local folks and I do believe it was the case all over Scotland.When one refered to a Carbonized soft drink no matter the flavour it was just called plain ginger.Like.
Gees a drap a yer ginger.Which translated in to English dialogue would be.' I say Darling, may I have a drop of your soft drink'.We did not care what flavour it was it was called ginger.Mind you they did have a specific flavoured drink which was called Ginger Beer,NO! it was just the colour of beer but was flavoured with ginger.
Another part of Springwells history in those days was Gambling.
Every Friday it was not uncommon to see some of the miners wives go up to the entrance of the mines to collect the wages that the miners had made that week,this was before they went and drank and gambled what they had made.This was indeed a very common occurrence for the miner to go to the pubs directly from the pithead,if she was not fast enough to waylay him on his way home invariably he finished up at the pub and most times drank most or gambled what he had made.One can feel the frustation of this life they led and much more so for the women with their children. To the men this was an every day occurrence and the pubs were their only way of blowing off steam.
The Gambling was big! I do know that you Aussies play the same game over there as we do.We just called it TOSSING. or Heads and Tails played with two copper pennys of the realm.You tossed them a good distance in the air and allowed them to fall without touching anyone in the huge crowds which attended these Tossing Schools.
Springwells was well known around Lanarkshire for its Sunday after church Tossing School.This was planned in great detail,from the lookout for the police who were stationed at various intersections or highpoints to see any police in the near vicinity and give warning of a raid.There was one person in charge of the gambling school and he was called the Baber it was his job to collect all the bets and to pay out if the lad tossing the coins tossed two tails. Two heads you are a winner,a head and tail you toss again, until you turn up two of a kind.
If you say that you have 10--30men all gambling and most of them big strong miners I think you have to consider this to be a rather large crowd and such a crowd which easily could get out of control especially if they are on the losing side of the toss.So this Baber had to have his own henchmen and he himself was one very capable person to handle a situation when it arrived AND IT DID! constantly,
You always found that he was without a doubt the local punchdrunk bully and if you did not believe it to be the case he was willing to take you on to prove it to the crowd attending the tossing, and they did come along to try their luck at gaining this position,as it had quite a large financial
pay out to the Baber.If anyone tossed three heads in a row he was a winner and the Baber always got a cut of the winnings.this could go on all day and each time some one tossed three heads in a row he was pocketing a fair amount of money so much so, I can recall as a boy watching the Barber walk away with all of the money. At this particular tossing,he had pocketed so much money that he could compete in the game and finished up the big winner.WHO IS GOING TO ARGUE WITH THE LOCAL TOUGH.
I have to mention the raids with the police This was great fun for us kids to watch about 30men being chased by at the most at anytime say four police ,this was considered a big raid,I think they called in reinforcements from the surrounding police stations. I can only remember two policemen at the Blantyre station.I can never remember seeing anyone caught,just a lot of puffing and grunting going on.I don’t think the police ever really wanted to catch anyone.Just a lot of show on their part.Talk about the Keystone cops ,they had nothing on this lot.
The streets of Springwells:-
Auchinraith Terrace, Burnside Crescent, Parkville Drive and Springwell Crescent.There was also an area between Blantyre and Burnbank a place we called the Model Hotel.This was a sort of cheap Doss house where all the local vagrants and homeless people from this area lived. There also was a fairly large Foundry which produced various iron products.One of the by products from the foundry were iron pellets the size of an Euro,these we used in our sling shots,or Slungs as we called them,believe me when I say that was a deadly weapon in the hands of us young un's.There was a small burn running between the two villages and I do not know if it was official or not ,but that to us was the dividing line between the googins and the badgins
All us kids from Blantyre wore white hats!!The Burnbank kids did not look as nice in their black ones.
Regards
TDH
? In most cases though I remember these were preferred to be taken when frozen solid so that they were like huge chunky "ice poles". They came in cola, raspberry & I think orange flavours... and were widely available in Fife in the 1960s. 
Sometime she would get a bag of crisps 
with folk asking her "hen are you alright" while she waited for him. Or in the Faifley she would be watching out of her bedroom window to see if he got off the bus. Oh but when he came stoatin home he had to pass his mothers house and he would get a bit of a tongue lashing for his troubles 
