Memories of my Grandparents Luke and Janet Dent
The Dent and Clark family were all small. Grandpa was very quiet, slim and with a good sense of humour. He liked his house to be extremely clean and
tidy, as it always was. Grandma used to
say that he would come in from work (Vickers Armstrong’s factory) at Scotswood and
would run his finger over the mantelpiece checking for dirt and dust. Grandma and Grandpa were much better off
financially than my mam and dad. My
Grandfather was very careful with his money.
He held a tight reign on the finances, but always ensured that my Mother
and Grandmother were well dressed. They had a very comfortable home. There was a lovely chintzy sitting room with
a china cabinet full of nice things, a piano that their son, William, Uncle
Billy was ‘made’ to learn, but eventually it became something that he absolutely loved. He told us that he used to get very upset at
having to do lessons when his friends were outside playing. When he was on leave from the Merchant Navy
Billy would go into the sitting room for hours on end and play his piano often
along with Fats Waller records and other jazz artists . My sister and I used to sit entranced, as he was as good as this recording - Uncle Billy was a very good pianist. As a child Grandma would let us sit and plonk
for hours on the piano, I loved it. I
remember when I was about 11 or 12 they had a television in this room and
Grandpa’s favourite programmes were wrestling and Harry Corbett's Sooty and Sweep puppets,
he used to sit and laugh his head off.
My Grandmother Janet was
brilliant, she was very interested in what was going on in the world, although
she never believed that the Americans actually landed on the Moon!
She died of cancer at the age of almost 90 in 1978. I was pregnant with my daughter Elise at the
time and remember I was very sad not only at losing her, but that she did not
live to see her Great Grandchild. I can
remember her telling me that when she was about 45 (probably in
the menopause) she was stunned when she went to the doctor because she was not
feeling too well and found she was having ‘Billy’ there was nearly 15 years
between my mother and her brother, the much loved boy. There was too much of an age gap for my mother and Billy to ever have a close relationship. I don't think Jennie was pleased about the late addition to the family as she
was given the job as his unpaid nanny.
Grandma told us that one day she was told to take him for a walk and
actually dumped him and the pram and left him.
“Naughty girl” was the words used by Grandma. From then on my mother no longer looked after Billy and went out and got
herself a job.
Grandma had two brothers
William and Albert and three sisters Elizabeth Mary and Willhemena as well as
two ½ sisters Hilda and Ellen. Her
mother married again on the death of her first husband William Clark b
1881.
Willehemina married William, Will
Kearton, a joiner. They lived in Darlington,
I can remember we visited once, and again compared to us they lived in a very
nice house. They could be described as
upper working class. They
had a son and daughter, Edith and Tom.
I remember my mam telling me she was ill in hospital and Tom Kearton visited her with his mother Willhemina. He picked up one of my mother's knitting needles and accidentally poked her in the eye, luckily no lasting damage was done
Aunt
Ellen was described as slow, but she wasn't, she was profoundly deaf. In in those days they did not have the means to properly educate people like Ellen. She never married, and was, for many years, ‘Matron’s Maid at the Fleming Memorial
Hospital in Newcastle. I knew my Aunt Ellen quite well as my Grandma
Janet kept close contact with Ellen; I suppose she ‘looked after’ her, so
often when I visited ‘Grandma’ as a child and as an adult Ellen was often at
her house. She wore a big NHS hearing
aid which squealed and squeaked as I remember.
My
Grandmother’s sister Mary, who is referred to in the letter married Tom Gibson
who became a manager at Vickers Armstrongs.
She died having her 13th child. I can remember my Grandmother telling me that
”‘he’ was told if she had any more children it would kill her – the baby was
buried with her”(I suppose that was a women’s lot at this time) but my
Grandmother was not impressed. It is notable that my Grandfather and Janet had only two children some 15 years apart.
Hilda is very
interesting, my Grandmother described Hilda one day as a ‘very naughty
girl’. I think Hilda was a good time
girl which was not the done thing in those days. Anyway, she met a young Peruvian studying at
Armstrong’s College in Newcastle
called Carlos de Terry. Carlos was so besotted with her, he left her the money to sail out to Peru, Hilda spent this money, but undeterred he sent her tickets instead. Bravely Hilda sailed to and married him.
Carlos was a Geologist/Mining Engineer and Hilda became a Peruvian, with, I suppose, a life-style that she
could only dream of. In about 1923.
When
my mother was six, during the slump, Hilda persuaded my grandparents to emigrate to Peru,
telling them there was plenty of work.
They sold up and sailed to Peru. My mam could just remember going through the Panama Canal. She
loved 'Uncle Carlos’ who called her Juanita.
I have an ancient tennis racket hanging on my sitting room wall which he
inscribed “to Jenny” on one side and “Uncle Carlos 1924” on the other. Peru did not come up to expectations, returning home after a short while. They had to set up home again, which I
am sure was not easy. Grandma
and Grandpa needed a home and bought pieces of second-hand furniture often from large old houses, which must have been cheap in
those days; she bought some very nice antique pieces of
furniture like the very old bookcase which I still have.
Sadly Carlos died reasonably
young. Hilda came ‘home’ once when I was
about 13 around 1959, and stayed with my Grandmother who lived in Scotswood at
the time. She looked and acted very ‘Spanish’/Latin
American with her black hair pulled back with a centre parting (I now realise
it must have been dyed at her age) she spoke English with a
broken accent. She never had children. I remember she took my sister and I to see
Cary Grant in “An Affair to Remember” at the ‘pictures’ in Newcastle, but we
never felt comfortable around her, she would say in front of us ‘look at their
eyes they know far more than they are letting on’ or words to that effect; which
was not true, as we were extremely naïve; we were just terrified of her. She embarrassed my Grandmother greatly when
they went out to shops as she would pick up fruit and taste it and then put it
back, not quite the done thing in Scotswood at the time. Grandpa Dent used to laugh a lot at the way
she went on. She went back to Peru, and that
was the last time we saw her. Grandma
and Aunt Ellen used to occasionally write, but I don’t know what happened to her. She never married again, but Grandma said she became a 'kept woman'.
Unfortunately I know nothing
about Grandma's brother William or her sister Elizabeth Clark.
My Grandfather Luke Dent was a
boiler/pipe-man in Vickers Armstrong. I have
his 40 year retirement certificate (framed) on my dining room wall. He retired at about 68 in 1958 after 40 years
service (he lied about his age).
Unfortunately within a few months of retirement he had a massive stroke and
died shortly after, never regaining consciousness.
Grandpa Dent fought in the first world
war. I think he was wounded but was one of the lucky ones who survived, unfortunately,
but understandably he never talked about it.
He was what was known as a runner, someone who ran between trenches with
messages etc, highly dangerous. Whole generations of men and what
were literally boys were killed - statistics say there were about 26,000,000 dead
in the ‘war to end all wars’.
Luke and Janet lived in a few houses in and around the Scotswood area, their last house was at the
very top of Gregson Street,
(they were demolished in the 1960’s or 1970s I think). These were terraced houses built on a very
steep hill - this house was built right next to or on a railway tunnel. The vibration and noise when a train passed
through was unbelievable. The toilet was
outside in the yard, there was no flushing mechanism there was just a big hole
into the main drains. When we were very
small my sister Dorothy and I, on visits to Grandma and Grandpa always had to
have an adult with us (in case we fell down the toilet).
Their next door neighbour in Gregson Street
Scotswood was a Spinster called Evelyn Storey.
Evelyn knew “Auntie Molly” (nee Gibson - the daughter of Mary, Grandma Dent's sister).
Other neighbours I remember were Jackie Farrar, and Billy Wheeler.
Dorothy and I used to "get messages" for Grandma, i.e. buy odd items of food etc from a shop on the corner run by a lady called Annie
Buckle. It was a dusty place, and Annie always had a chat with us, she was small and rotund and very friendly.
After visiting Grandma and Grandpa we used to wait for the bus
home in the windswept and freezing corrugated iron bus shelter just before the old Chainbridge over the Tyne. We would get the 44 Venture bus from Newcastle that picked us up at Scotswood through Blaydon, and up the very steep Summerhill to Greenside. The Chainbridge was originally built for horse drawn vehicles but as
people became more affluent the amount of traffic greatly increased and
eventually it was replaced because of the traffic jams it caused and obviously
before it fell into the Tyne. If the bus had to stop the bridge bounced up and down. There were times when you could see the river
through quite large holes in the tarmac
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| The Old Corrugated Iron Bus Shelter Scotswood - The Ord Arms in the background |
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| New Scotswood Bridge opened in 1967 the old Chainbridge opened in 1831 |
