Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums Blog

Health and safety at work 100 years ago

While I was recently cataloguing the personnel records in the Vickers Armstrong collection I came across a large quantity of accident records. These give a fascinating insight into working conditions at the factories and shipyards operated by the firm in Newcastle upon Tyne.

View of the Elswick Works, Newcastle upon Tyne, c1900 (TWAM ref. D.VA/57/9).

The collection includes a series of nine accident report books for the Elswick Shipyard covering the years 1898-1916. These include the names, trades, ages and addresses of all the men injured in the shipyard together with details of their accidents. There are numerous examples of back injuries suffered during heavy lifting together with minor injuries such as bruises and lacerations caused by falls and accidental contact with equipment and machinery. With so many lathes, saws and presses in operation accidents were inevitable.

Not all accidents took place during work time. I came across one example of a serious accident resulting from ‘boys being boys’. The worker concerned was an apprentice in the shipyard, John Cribbins, who lived in Byker.

Elswick Shipyard accident report book entry relating to John Cribbins, 7 September 1915 (TWAM ref. DS.VA/2/63/9)

As the entry shows, on 7 September 1915 Cribbins lost a finger while ‘Amusing himself’ with companions during his dinner hour (TWAM ref. DS.VA/2/63/9). The accident report book records the nature and circumstances of the injuries:

“1^st finger right hand amputated & thumb & second finger severely lascerated by bogie wheel passing over it. Talking to companions who were amusing themselves in dinner hour with Yard Bogie, on railway down east side of 858 ship’s berth”.

To further rub salt into the wound he didn’t receive any compensation for his injury. Sadly he was just one of hundreds of men and women who lost fingers, eyes and sometimes even their lives in the shipyards and workshops at Elswick and Walker. Fatalities were not uncommon as the registers of accidents at the Low Walker shipyard testify. The entry below documents a fatal injury to Edward Gray, a 43 year old painter’s labourer, on 13 July 1908 (TWAM ref. DS.VA/2/58/1).

Entries from a register of accidents at the Low Walker shipyard, July 1908 (TWAM ref. DS.VA/2/58/1)

Tragically, falls such as this from the stages besides vessels were the cause of numerous shipyard deaths.

With so many injuries to employees Armstrong Whitworth were inevitably facing compensation claims from a large number of workers. The Vickers Armstrong collection includes files relating to a significant number of these cases from the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. While the majority of these relate to men, some do also relate to women. This is particularly the case during the First World War, when large numbers of women went to work in the factories.

An example is the case file relating to Florence Dodds, from Chester le Street, who worked for the firm as a machinist at the Elswick Works (TWAM ref DS.VA/2/76/14). She was 22 years of age at the time of her accident in October 1916, when she suffered two broken fingers on her right hand and the amputation of the top of her middle finger.

Compensation case file relating to Florence Dodds, (TWAM ref DS.VA/2/76/14).

Compensation case file relating to Florence Dodds, 1919 (TWAM ref DS.VA/2/76/14).

Three years later in 1919 Florence Dodds accepted a lump sum settlement of £40.00 for her injuries.

These accident records are a reminder of just how far we have come in terms of improvements to workplace health and safety. As well as being of interest to social historians they may well also be of interest to family historians whose ancestors worked in the Armstrong Whitworth shipyards and factories at Elswick, Scotswood and Walker. Why not visit the Archives to find out more – our location and opening times can be found on our website.

Frank Graham, North-East fighter in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War

Exhibitions Laing Art Gallery Local History Social History
Posted by administrator on May 9, 2015 Permalink Leave a comment

In October 1938, the women of Barcelona presented this banner to the British Battalion of the International Brigades, whose members had fought on behalf of the Spanish Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. It marked the end of the war for the members of the Battalion, which was disbanding in the wake of the victories of Franco’s Nationalists. However, the war in Spain continued until Franco’s final victory in 1939.

The banner is on show in the exhibition Conscience and Conflict: British artists and the Spanish Civil War at the Laing Art Gallery. The exhibition shows the extraordinary impact the war had for many artists in Britain, who responded with sculpture, paintings, prints and posters.

People from a wide range of political opinion united in anti-Fascist feeling against Franco’s violent assault on the Spanish Republican Government. Around 2,500 British volunteers felt so strongly that they travelled to Spain to join the Republican fighters.

A number of volunteers from the North East of England went to Spain, including Frank Graham. He’s particularly remembered for his books of local history, published by his own small firm in Newcastle. But as a young man, he spent 15 months fighting for the Spanish Republican Army in the Civil War, before being invalided out with wounds. He’s pictured (centre, wearing glasses) behind the front at the time of the Battle of Jamara, 1937.

The gruelling fighting at Jamara blocked General Franco’s advance on Madrid. Graham spoke to the North Mail when he was home on leave in April 1937 after the fighting on the Jamara front:

Another North-East man, Clifford Lawther, also lost his life in the battle of Jamara. However, there was no firm information on his fate until July. It was supplied by Harry Pollitt, General Secretary of the Communist Party, who had travelled to Spain to track down information on missing British fighters. Clifford Lawther was a bus conductor at Hexham before going to Spain, and was the younger brother of Will Lawther, vice-president of the Miners’ Federation.

Edgar Wilkinson, previously a Sunderland bus conductor, also went missing at the Battle of Jamara. The North Mail in July reported that his mother was travelling to London to see if Harry Pollitt had any definite news after his return from Spain.

In 1986, the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War was commemorated in Newcastle with a plaque and a tree planted by Frank Graham in the grounds of the Civic Centre.

The stories of International Brigade members feature in a fascinating drama-documentary made originally for BBC Radio 4, To Make The People Smile Again (free, Laing Art Gallery, Saturday May 16^th, 2pm-3.45pm.) It also tells the story of George Wheeler, who fought in the last great battle of the Ebro and was taken prisoner. The drama documentary will be followed by talks by the drama producer, Steve Chambers (University of Northumbria) and Martin Ellis (Zymurgy Publishing), publisher of the book on which the drama was based.

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Banner embroidered by the Women of Barcelona for the British Battalion of the International Brigades, Marx Memorial Library, London

Sources and further information

‘Story of Northerners’ Sacrifice at Madrid’, North Mail, April 10 1937 p7

‘Killed Fighting in Spain’, North Mail, July 7 p6

Frank Graham wrote and published his own account in The Battle of Jamara, 1987.

This online Chronicle story gives some more details of North-East fighters in the Spanish Civil War – Our soldiers who fought in the Spanish Civil War.

More information on Frank Graham is in this online biography.

There are more details in articles and books:

Mike Jamieson, ‘Heroes of the Civil War’, Evening Chronicle, 7 January 1988.

Lewis Mates, The Spanish Civil War and the British Left: Political Activism and the Popular Front. (2007). I.B. Tauris.

Don Watson, John Corcoran, An Inspiring Example: North East of England and the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939 , 1996

Natural History Society Archives Highlight VE Day

Great North Museum: Hancock Local History
Posted by administrator on May 8, 2015 Permalink Leave a comment

This is a guest post by June Holmes, Archivist of the Natural History Society of Northumbria.

Friday 8 May 2015 is the anniversary of VE Day (Victory in Europe Day), marking
70 years since the end of the Second World War in Europe.

The WW2 made a huge impacted on the Hancock Museum, resulting in money and staff problems with many of the members lost as casualties of the conflict.

Hancock Museum Curator T Russell Goddard

Curator T Russell Goddard (1889-1948) records the welcome news of the end of hostilities in his Curator’s diary and the Museum closed for the day.

“Today & tomorrow, May 9th, were appointed by the Prime Minister (Mr. Winston Churchill) as public holidays in celebration of victory in Europe. The Prime Minister made a public announcement by wireless at 1500 & H.M. The King broadcast a message to all his peoples at 2100.”

The day before he had recorded that “sand bags etc.” had been cleared away from the Museum and added –

“At 0241 today at General Eisenhower’s Headquarters at Rheims [sic City of Reims, France] General Jodl, the representative of the German High Command & of Grand Admiral Doenitz [sic Karl Dönitz], the designated head of the German State signed the act of unconditional surrender of all German land, sea and air forces in Europe.”

Curator T Russell Goddard’s diary

On Wednesday the 9th May the Hancock reopened from 1pm – 5pm and the joyous people of Newcastle celebrated by visiting their favourite museum – over 800 people came through the doors!

See the Curator’s diaries for yourself in the library of the Great North Museum:Hancock. Contact June Holmes Archivist of the Natural History Society of Northumbria to make an appointmen: june.holmes@ncl.ac.uk

Doctor Death

Collections & Objects Science The Archives
Posted by administrator on May 7, 2015 Permalink Comments (2)

Diary of a Doctor 1826-29. Courtesy of Tyne and Wear Archives Ref: DX47/1

On Saturday 7^th March, 1829, a little after 10 o’clock, an estimated 20,000 people were on the Town Moor in Newcastle awaiting a gruesome spectacle. They were there to see Jane Jamieson’s execution, sentenced to death for the murder of her mother. Arguably though, her hanging was not to be the most grisly part of her sentence. As part of her punishment, Jane was to be dissected at Surgeons Hall, following her death. This ruling was a provision of the 1752 Murder Act, which stated that “for better preventing the horrid crime of murder” dissection would act as a “further terror and peculiar mark of infamy.”[1]

The Murder Act itself was both a punitive and a practical measure, as surgeons and anatomists had extremely limited access to bodies and as a result had become increasingly reliant on an illicit trade in bodies, often freshly robbed from the grave – the most famous of these ‘body snatchers’ or ‘grave robbers’ being Scotland’s Burke and Hare in the c19th.[2] The most famous illustrated example of dissection can be seen in the work of artist William Hogarth and his engraved series “The Four Stages of Cruelty.” In which, the central character, Tom Nero, suffers the ignominious fate of execution and humiliation on the dissection table after death; the cruel reward for his reprobate behaviour.

If the inducement of terror in criminals, was the intention of the Murder Act then it was extremely successful. The punishment of the surgeon’s knife was often more feared than death itself, not least because it was,

“a disgrace, a humiliation, (and) a final act of indignity.”

The Guardian, November 7th 2011

William Hogarth’s The Reward of Cruelty. Plate IV in the Series. Image courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Stages_of_Cruelty

Regional accounts of dissections are rare, often limited to the simple details provided by the records of the Barber Surgeon’s themselves. However, a recently discovered diary of an assistant-surgeon in Newcastle in the 1820’s gives hitherto unprecedented access to such an event. Thomas Giordani Wright was the assistant to Surgeon James McIntyre of Newcastle between 1826-29 and wrote a diary detailing his daily life and works. Amongst Wright’s many entries are several on Jane Jamieson, including her trial, execution and dissection. His entry on her trial is fascinating.

“I could not obtain access to the crowded court but I am told by one who was there that the unfortunate creature is condemned to execution on Saturday morning and to be given to Surgeon’s Hall for dissection. If the latter part of the sentence be correctly reported. I shall most likely partake of the benefits accruing therefrom.”[3]

Wright did indeed “partake of the benefits” as he was one of the many surgeons and surgeons-assistants who attended her dissection and the lecture series that followed. The lectures were given by John Fife, surgeon and later Mayor of Newcastle, and were free to surgeons and their assistants and open to the public for a fee of half a guinea for the whole course, or 2/6 per lecture. Wright thought the best lecture was the one given on Jamieson’s brain at which he estimated about 50 others were in attendance, about a third of whom were non-professionals.

“Mr John Fife on Monday morning gave a very good demonstration on the brain of the criminal who suffered on Saturday….and had a good opportunity, from the freshness of the brain before him, to exhibit its parts and structure in a clear manner, more so than usually falls to the lot of an anatomical teacher.”[4]

A few months after Jane was executed, Wright left for London and thus ended his diaries and with it our fascinating glimpse into medicine and punishment in Georgian Newcastle. Jamieson was to be the last woman hung in public in Newcastle and the last woman hung in Newcastle or Durham for over forty years.[6] The practice of dissecting executed criminals was ended three years later, with the enactment of the Anatomy Act 1832.

[1] The Murder Act 1752 . The same act would introduce another additional punishment, that of gibbeting, an example of a gibbet survives at the South Shields Museum & Art Gallery[1]

[2] There are numerous instances of this practice happening in Newcastle.

[3] Thomas Giordani Wright and Alastair Johnson, Diary of a Doctor: Surgeon’s Assistant in Newcastle 1826-1829, 1St Edition edition (Newcastle upon Tyne: Newcastle Libraries and Information Service, 1998), 69.

[4] Diary of A Doctor 1826-1829, Tyne and Wear Archives Ref: DX47/1

[5] Ibid entry March 7th Saturday, 1829

[6] Mary Ann Cotton was hanged at Durham Prison on the 24^th March 1873

Newcastle foodship crew witness the devastation of Guernica bombing in the Spanish Civil War

Exhibitions Laing Art Gallery Local History Social History
Posted by administrator on May 1, 2015 Permalink Comments (1)

This photograph of refugees on the road from Guernica was taken by Norman Ramsey of South Shields shortly after the city was bombed on April 26^th 1937. He had arrived on the Newcastle steamer Hamsterley, which had docked in Bilbao three days earlier with a cargo of food for the starving Basque population.

The bombing of the ancient city of Guernica was carried out by German aircraft in support of the Nationalist leader General Franco during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). The war began after the Nationalists launched violent assaults to overthrow the democratically elected Republican government.

Norman Ramsey also photographed the ruins of the centre of Guernica. His pictures were published in the North Mail and Newcastle Chronicle after he returned to Newcastle in May.

Guernica was a purely civilian target, and people in Europe and America were horrified to read the account by the journalist George Steer published in The Times and The New York Times immediately after the attack:

At 2 a.m. today when I visited the town the whole of it was a horrible sight, flaming from end to end. The reflections of the flames could be seen in the clouds of smoke above the mountains from 10 miles away. Throughout the night houses were falling until the streets became long heaps of red impenetrable debris… many [people] were forced to remain round the burning town lying on mattresses, or looking for lost relatives or children.

Guernica is only 35 kilometres from the port of Bilbao where the Hamsterley and two other British food ships were docked. The Basque authorities took the opportunity to show the British crews the devastation. The master of the Hamsterley, Captain A. H. Still, of Swalwell, described the ship’s arrival at Bilbao and the trip to Guernica in the North Mail:

As the report mentions, Bilbao was also being bombed, and it was dangerous work for the seamen. The Basque people were overjoyed to see them, as one of the crew of the Hamsterley described (the newspaper report, written after the ship’s return to Newcastle in May, also mentions their next trip to Bilbao):

Franco’s Nationalists controlled the main Spanish food-producing regions of Galicia and Castile. The food shortage was acute in the Republican Basque region, which had been cut off for a considerable time.

To reach Bilbao, the Hamsterley had to run the Nationalist blockade, which was imposed on March 31st. This was followed up by Nationalist threats to sink British ships approaching Republican-held ports.

The Hamsterley was at the head of a small convoy of three British food ships which docked at Bilbao on April 23rd (this is what the North Mail may have meant by describing the ship as the first – in actuality, two other British ships had got through the blockade earlier).

The anonymous South Shields seaman gave the North Mail a dramatic account of how the British flagship Hood and the destroyer Firedrake went into action to protect the convoy against the Nationalist cruiser Almirante Cervera and the armed trawler Galerna:

…the Almirante Cervera … signalled to us to stop. When we failed to do so, she showed her disapproval by sending a shell across our bows. … Firedrake darted in between us and the Nationalist cruiser.… We carried on again towards Bilbao and were at the head of the convoy when another shell burst in the sea. … Firedrake swung out her torpedo tubes and Hood cleared her decks for action. Her mighty guns looked terrifying. Firedrake signalled to the trawler Galerna that she must not meddle with British ships… The trawler tried to get in between us and the three-mile limit [international waters start 3 miles from the coast] but Firedrake headed her off until we had passed inside the limit. Then the Galerna tried to reach us again, but the shore batteries at Bilbao opened fire…

The South Shields seaman whose words were reported by the North Mail may have been Norman Ramsey, who took the Guernica photographs reproduced at the top of the blog. In 1924, Ramsey was recorded as having a butcher’s shop in South Shields, but subsequently seems to have changed jobs. When asked by the North Mail, his wife confirmed that he was working as a sailor on the Hamsterley on this voyage. The enquiry was prompted by a ‘mystery’ over a statement that her husband apparently made when the Hamsterley and the other two British ships were waiting at the French Basque port of St Jean de Luz to see if it would be possible to run the blockade. The North Mail reported on April 23rd:

The Newcastle managers of the ship [Hamsterley], which is owned by the Hartley Steamship Company, denied yesterday that Mr. Norman Leathley Ramsey, of South Shields, who is now with the ship, was their representative. Mr. Ramsey, who had been described as representative of the owners, was reported to have said yesterday that he was willing to run the blockade of the Basque Coast if the Basque Government would guarantee the value of the ship – £40,000.

On the return trip from Bilbao, the Hamsterley had to run the blockade for a second time, as Captain Still told the North Mail:

On its next voyage to Bilbao in May, carrying coal, the Hamsterley took part in evacuating refugees to French ports, along with the Newcastle steamer Backworth (described in a future blog). Like other North East ships trading with Bilbao, the Hamsterley brought back iron ore, arriving with its cargo at Tyne Dock.

The destruction of Guernica swung a lot of public opinion in Britain towards the Republican cause. In addition, many British artists were very affected by the powerful imagery Picasso created in response to the tragedy; his Guernica paintings were exhibited in Britain in 1938 in support of the Republicans. One of these iconic pictures, Weeping Woman, is on show alongside paintings and sculpture by British artists in the exhibition Conscience and Conflict, which is at the Laing Art Gallery until June 7^th. There are previous exhibition blogs here and here.

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North Mail reports in the Local Studies collection, Newcastle City Library:

Apr 23 1937 p1 Newcastle Food Ship for Bilbao. Shields Skipper a ‘Hard Nut’ – He’ll Get Through

May 5 1937 p1 and p12: Photographs by Mr. N. Ramsey of South Shields.

May 11 1937 p7: How Navy Passed Tyne Foodship Into Bilbao. Hood Cleared for Action… Shields Seaman’s Story of Destroyer’s Warning. Hamsterley’s Adventures

Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums Blog

Natural History Society Archives Highlight VE Day

Doctor Death

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