OLD HEELEY: A FEW NOTES

WRITTEN BY MEMBERS OF THE

ADULT EDUCATION

"HEELEY'S HISTORY" WORKSHOP

No. 7: JULY 1987

1. SMOKING.................................................................................................p.1
2. HEELEY BOTTOM SHOPS: KELLY’S 1924 DIRECTORY ....................p.6

INTRODUCTION

For this edition, we thought we would include on example of the information - gathering conversations we have been having recently in our Heeley’s History Workshop sessions on Monday afternoons. This one, on how smoking habits and attitudes have changed, is from about a. month ago. The other topic has been contributed by one of our members who was so interested in our plan of Heeley Bottom, in the lost edition, that he decided to look it up in Kelley's 1924 Street Directory of Sheffield. (The Local Studies room in the Central Library has copies of these Directories for most years since the 1880's).

If you would like to join in any of our conversations about old Heeley, you can be sure you will be made very welcome. We meet in the former Heeley Bank Junior School on Monday afternoons (details at the bottom of this page). There is else a community Snack-Bar there from 12.00 to 3.00pm, which is open to the general public, and a supervised crèche where young children can be left.

In any case, if you think you have any new information - or any corrections to add to what we print in these to booklets, we would be very pleased to here from you (see below far address). . Please keep the information flooding in - don’t keep it to yourself while you're still around to tell us!

We have had to leave out a lot of material this time, so we hope to include that in a September edition.

MEERSBROOK PARK CENTENARY CELEBRATIONS: SATURDAY 19TH SEPTEMBER

Organised by Sheffield City Recreation Department. Enquiries to Mr., Ted Keene, Tel. 500525. Look out for our "Meersbrook Park Centenary" booklet, And our "Memories Corner" on the day. If you have any photographs, knick-knacks etc., that we could use, please got in touch as soon as possible.

HOW TO FIND US AND OUR BOOKLETS

Meetings: Heeley Bank School, Heeley Bank Road (at the junction with Myrtle Road), Sheffield 2. Every Monday, 1.45-3.45pm, except school holidays.

Open to anyone - newcomers especially welcome.

Extra Copies: Community Snack Bar, Heeley Hank School, Mondays, 10.00am-3.00pm, every week except school holidays.

Holidays: Please note that there are no meetings on the 25th May and 1st June, nor for 20th July to 31st August. First Autumn meeting: 7th September.

Enquiries and Messages: Oliver Blensdorf, Tel. 553587 or c/o Mount Pleasant Community Centre, Sharrow Lane, Sheffield, S11 8AE.

SMOKING

At a recent Monday’s workshop the conversation turned to cigarettes and smoking habits - different members of various ages gave their memories of how smoking habits have changed, and of the different brands of tobacco available. The conversation went something like this.

"Woodbine cigarettes were 5 for a penny 75 years ago. Cinderella, Ogdens tabs, Bruno/Sweet Crop were 3½d for ½ ounce and you used to get a box of matches free. I used to fetch ½ ounce Bruno, ½ ounce Sweet Crop mixed. They didn’t mix it, you mixed it when you got it home and you got the tobacco and the box of matches for 3½d, about the time 1912. My Uncle bought this on Saturday morning and it had to lest the week. Twist was the cheapest tobacco, about 2d an ounce. When I worked at the Co-op as a lad, I knew a dray man that smoked twist. He used to ask me to fetch him some twist up from the cellar. When it was delivered the twist was very long and coiled in big rolls. Once, I cut a chunk off, coiled it round my waist, and pulled my jersey over it. I had no idea how much to give him. Although I must have given him about 11 pounds of twist!"

"Do you remember Mrs. Whitham’s house window shop on Denmark Road? She used to give the lads 1 Woodbine and 2 or 3 matches for ½d, so they were 5 for 2d then because they were in paper packets and then in an oblong box."

"We used to go round the streets picking tab ends up and taking paper off and putting them in a tin and then rolling them up in brown paper and smoking that, at the age of 8 or 9. There were no tipped cigarettes then. We never bought any cigarettes." "There were some cigarettes called Little Queens, they were only for ladies. What we always used to fancy were a packet and they were mixed, there were Turkish and Russian, I think Russian was a browny colour, Turkish was a pale lemon or a pale pink I can’t remember which, and we used to get these and they stunk horrible, but we used to smoke them." "There were Black Cat. Craven A were first with tips. There were Passing Clown, Capstan, Senior Service, Gold Flake - you never see any Gold Flake up here but if you go down South you’ll find em."

"Always remember as a child I used to lie in bed awake and I couldn’t get to sleep because the neighbor next door he was cough, cough, cough and he used to smoke Capstan full strength and he worked as a grinder with all this dust of course and I used to go in, he would save me these cigarette packets which I used to use as motor cars and push them along the table, and I always wanted the yellow one, -would that be the Robin? - and he always used to complain about this cough which he could never get rid of - and looking back it’s rather sad with the combination of tobacco smoke and grinding wheel he died when he was about 50." That would be about the 30’s. His coughing would be interrupted when he used to shout to his Mother, he would say "Mother, where’s my shirt, where’s my clean shirt Mother?"

"Me and my pal used to make cigars out of leaves and smoke them, you know that planting in Norton Lees Lane at bottom of Warminster Toad, there is a lot of trees there, he lived other side of the road, that cottage that stands back, his Father were the gardener there, and we used to go in that planting and roll leaves up and smoke those."

"I used to have a go every year to try and smoke pipe, I wanted to stop cigarette smoking because I was a chain smoker, I never used to have a cigarette out of my mouth, and I wanted to stop cigarette smoking and I used to go and buy a pipe, ½ ounce of Sweet Crop, pouch and pipe and all lot, and I used to have a go at it, and my tongue, it used to make it sore, I would stand it for a day or two and then I’d chuck it away and go back to the cigarettes. Chap next to me a bloke called Beakin at work ha says "I’ve got some good bacca here," he says "try some of this" and it were in a block about 2½ inches by about 2 inches, inch thick, he says "cut some of that off and try that" it hadn’t a name he got it off a pal of his what were in the Navy and it wore soaked in rum, I had two puffs and that were it, it made me feel rum, rum what were in it! He used to smoke a tobacco and they called it Jackdo, and I used to think it smells lovely his tobacco, but it were no good to me."

"Lads would normally start smoking while they were at school. Should be in late teens when I started smoking pipe, used to think pipe were only for older people." "I used to have a pipe of bacca and then have a cigarette, and then I used to bite the end off, I didn’t last long with a pipe, sometimes in 2 or 3 days I bit right through the stem, gripping it you know, and bite the end off, so I decided that pipe smoking were a bit more than I could manage because I was still smoking cigarettes."

"I tried allsorts, I tried clay pipe and I tried wooden pipe what wore lined with clay, I tried allsorts of pipes and it made no difference, it still made my tongue sore. They said they got a good smoke out of a clay pipe. They say it used to be best smoke, coolest smoke of the lot, clay pipe. I bought briar pipes, I bought allsorts of pipes. There was a great incidence of cancer of the mouth and lips and tongue with the clay pipes."

"I was apprentice in tool room and my mate he was sixty odd and he always smoked a clay pipe and he used to leave it on the end of the bench, well he had gone out one day and I fell for this a treat. One of the labourers he was always pulling your leg you know, over various things, so he says that clay pipe there if you get hold of it and you just tap it on the end, you know where you put it in your mouth, he said if you just tap it on the end that bowl drops off. So I said get away but he said it does, so I wouldn’t believe him, so I just tapped it and the bowl fell off. Well I put it back on the bench and he came in, he looked at it, he played havoc with me, I never told him I had done it - I must have ‘cos there were only me and him there, so it must have been me. I thought I fell for it alright."

"There was a lady smoked a clay pipe in Heeley Green, she was always outside in a chair smoking her clay pipe."

"I remember a lady on our road, Mrs. Moseley, she kept a house window shop, a big woman she was, she used to smoke a pipe, clay pipe sometimes.

If you find out when Woolworths first came and settled in Sheffield, that was the time when clay pipes went out in Sheffield, because of 6d pipes what Woolworths used to sell - early 30’s.

It we’re a common sight in towns but I think it wore more common in countryside round about 1910, 1912. They used to break stem off to about a couple of inch of the bawl of the pipe purposely, I don’t know why, whether it tasted better or not, I don’t know, but that is what they used to do. They had the bowl right close to their mouths."

"Does anybody know anything about Africanda tobacco? When I went to Coopers there must have been somebody who smoked it. He’d dozens of Africanda tins, even up to me leaving. They were 2 ounce tins, flat ones with hinge lids."

"Women started smoking during the lost war, because there were no sweets and with the pressure. Conductresses on trams or buses they got their partners, the drivers, smoking and they started smoking. Women wore mixing more with men."

"Because society ladies smoked in the 20’s and ladies like us couldn’t afford it, you knew you were with it then when you started working and got money, and so we tried to pretend that we were ladies as well."

" High society ladies had long cigarette holders. (This was around the time the Charleston came in). Basically it would be like anything else in life there would be one or two ladies oven smoked before the general trend of ladies smoking, I mean we are saying about ladies, my Father’s Aunt she smoked a clay pipe, and I would be very young and she would probably be in her 60's s then, she had been smoking that for ages. There is a certain amount in life that people have done something opposite to what they should do, but basically women smoking started after the 2nd war - or during the war it started."

"I think there was an increase in the amount of smoking done across the age range through the years generally, it was a thing that has grown and grown and grown as the years have gone on, whether it has been advertising or watching, you knew children watching their parents and copying and that sort of thing, I don’t know."

"Before the 1st world war at most firms you weren’t allowed to snake on the job it only came in the war time when they were allowed to smoke, in a lot of the engineering firms anyhow, it was only during the 1st world war that they were relaxed. It just came about that you were allowed to smoke in the works."

"I know there were a firm down bottom of Rockingham Lane, my Father and my Uncle worked on that firm at one bit, I forget name of the firm now, but there used to be a grinder on the wheel where my Father worked and he used to chew tobacco and after he had chewed it until there were no flavour left in it he used to stick it on the ceiling, and then when it were dry he would take it down and shove it in his pocket and then smoke it later."

"I gave up smoking in 1939 because my Mother had asthma very bad and I were always asked not to smoke in the house, and I gradually got used to not smoking indoors and gradually price of cigarettes went until they were a shilling for 20 and I thought to myself it’s costing me a lot of money smoking and being a little mester and working in my own little shop people used to come to me to bring me work and day one of warehouse lasses came up and she brought me some work, Monday morning it were, and I had just bought a pocket of 20 to come to work, Senior Service, and shoved em on cornish and she walked in brought me this work and she said, have you got a cigarette? So I says there’s a. packet on cornish, and she said can I have one? I said help yourself and then I says take lot, she said what? I says take lot, she said do you mean it? I said I have stopped smoking, and I have never smoked since. What I used to do I used to go to Parkers Herbalist at bottom Fitzwilliam Street and buy ounce of dandelion root and I used to chew that at work. It’s what they used to use for making ginger beer."

"Some bosses though, who didn’t smoke and didn’t swear, wouldn’t allow workmen to would they? They used to dismiss them didn’t they? Particularly I think if a boss didn’t smoke and didn’t swear he wouldn’t allow his workmen to either, particularly if they were Methodist as well, because my husband used to come home and he would be dying for a cigarette and he couldn’t have one at work and I don’t think they would let them go to the toilet either sometimes."

"We used, to have to ask to go to the toilet almost."

"He couldn’t swear either, and they could sack then couldn't they, they could sack them. So if you wanted to keep your job you didn't have to smoke." "Swearing wasn’t allowed, no fighting and what not - they used to give you a rule book. Before my time they used to make ‘em say prayers and that before they started work, didn’t they? They used to line the workers up in mills and all them places. Some of the Quakers did. I know only what I have seen and read, I don’ t know people personally, that did this."

"Smoking was looked, down on with ladies, but not with men. When I was in my early 20’s, in 1922/24, round about that time, I wouldn’t have dreamt of going out with a lass that smoked, she would have been low, I mean it didn’t matter about me, but my impression of a woman were if she smoked she wore common."

"I can remember first time I put a scarf over my head my Grandmother was ever so mad, she said you look like a common fish wife."

"I can remember it just as though it were yesterday, seeing the old lady about four doors below t’corner shop in Hooky Green, sitting there on’t step smoking clay pipe, in black clothes and that type of thing, high lace boots and sitting there smoking away, not once but it used to he a regular occurrence during Summer time. You wouldn’t expect a young woman to do that, just the old ladies. There must hove been smoking amongst women back in to the 19th century."

"I think there were a big change after the 1914 war, 1918 it started then because women got paid, women got money and women started to get independent. In the early days up to 1914, well later up to 1918, I should say, it just about changed when a woman dare go in a public house, I mean up to a certain period women daren't go in a public house, they wouldn’t have ‘em in. When 1939 war got on the way, and you got shortages, you used to get a certain class of people what had got transport and were able to get petrol, going out to pubs and of course wives and fancy women they took ‘em with ‘em, and of course that broke ice, and women started going into t’pub then. It was the war what did it, if it hadn’t have been for the war I think they would have still been same now, they wouldn’t have let their wives go in pub."

"We used to hove some but not many came in. Had a public house at Upperthorpe, one lady used to come Friday night lust in the snug on her own and used to have a couple of bottles of stout, but weekends one or two of the husbands used to bring their wives in, but apart from anything else, during the week you wouldn’t see one in. That was in the very early 20’s."

"Up in Heeley, women there in early 1910-11-12, when they used to go out at night to fetch beer or whatever, if husband didn’t want to go in to pub and they had to fetch it in the jug, she’d always go out with her apron on, a shawl and apron and th’ apron were always shoved over t’ jug, so people couldn’t see what she were going for. She’d go to off-licence. You knew if she had got apron on and if she wore only going ordinary shopping, apron would be straight down."

"Only time I saw my Mother fetching a gill of beer and that was when she were ironing, she was always thirsty then."

"There was a let of advertising to smoke, they used to give coupons away. If you didn’t smoke, people would try and make you smoke."

"If you didn’t smoke you were a sissy."

"I never smoked, born in 1923, I never smoked in the forces and I were in for five years."

"At about the age of 13 or 14, I went to smoke in the toilet at the bottom of the garden. When my Father followed me, he smelled the smoke and accused me of smoking. I tried to deny it, but he just said, if you want to smoke that’s your fault, he said, but you don’ t smoke behind my back. He was what you might call old fashioned then, but we could go anywhere providing we told him where we were going. He did tell us that it would stunt your growth. He smoked Woodbines and a pipe. I smoked ever since, up to me giving up about six years ago."

"I think my Father knew that I were smoking but he never said a word to me about smoking but he used to tell me stories about little boys what had been caught smoking and their Fathers, parents had taken then into a room and given em a cigar and made them smoke it, and the reason he told me, I think, that were to put me off, but it didn’t put me off."

"That was true, taking then in another room and giving em a cigar and making them smoke it, kids, to make them sick."

"I think it was a bad habit, that was looked upon as a bad habit, you never thought about your health. In fact in a lot of cases, grinders, when you are working on grinding wheels, you get a kind of a dryness in your throat and when you smoke it makes saliva and your mouths don’t get dry, I think in a lot of cases that people thought that the coughing in a morning was doing you good it was fetching phlegm off your chest, they thought it were doing you good."

"In certain industries there was chewing tobacco, colliers - was to make them spit to get the dust away, I think that is all the miners chewed it for."

"There’s been a big change in the amount of cigarettes people smoke. It was a thing that gradually grow on you, as you smoked you smoked more and more as you went on. People smoked more the older they were as an individual unless they had good control on themselves and rationed themselves to what they’d smoke, think to themselves I am smoking too much, I can’t afford it and that sort of thing, stopping.

"Cigars were only for the idle rich. I once remember one of the old cutlers what worked on Ibbotsons, of course they nearly all used to go out for a drink at night and he set off for his usual walk and he is at the back of a bloke what’s smoking a cigar and he followed him, waiting like till he’d got to the tavern and when he chucked it away he were going to have it. Of course this is tale he’s telling me when he comes to work at morning after night before and he says "got right to Norfolk bridge and he chucked it owert' bridge into water."

"I used to smoke my Dad’s cigars, with being in business he used to get cigars given him you see and. he didn't like cigars but he used to light it and he perhaps only smoke about an inch and then he used to let it go out and put it on the side, and so I used to let it lie there a day or two and then it used to disappear and I used to smoke it and then he’d say to my Mum "where’s that cigar that were on the side there?" "I don’t know I haven’t seen it" she’d say. "You must have moved it" he’d say and of course she used to get into trouble then - but I think he rumbled it that it were me, so when he got a cigar as I got to about 17 or 18 and that, he used to give it me and. I used to smoke it. I used to love a cigar, and one Christmas we were having a party at home and there were 2 cigars an the side and my Dad were telling something about his war experiences and he glanced over where cigars were and he picked ‘em up and walked bcck to middle of the room with this cigar in his hand, and my eldest brother were sat opposite me and I could see his eyes sparkle like he thought he were going to have a cigar - so my Dad turned, round and he lit one and then he turned round to me and gave me the other one, end oh my Brother's face! It got automatic that Dad used to give ‘em me, and I were alright, I used to have nice cigars."

"When you looked, at cigar boxes and the way they were made, they were all made out of cedar wood, and they were morticed, beautiful workmanship. I have one at home now, I am trying to think, there is a brand name on the top, but I can’t think what it is now. You used, to get some that hold about five and they were a shallow box and there was a press-stud on them, wooden boxes. Hull Dog used to be in a cardboard pocket with five in."

"I was going home one night on the tram and I lit a cigar up as I got going on the Moor I took a deep puff at it and I swallowed smoke, you know, thinking it were a cigarette - and I thought I should die. I got of the tram, I had to get off the tram and walk rest of the way. I never felt anything like it in my life. I just took a deep pull on the cigar and then swallowed it. I don’t know how I got off that tram, I got off it on Moor and walked rest of the way home, oh I have never forgot that, I thought I should die."

"I went to work down in Lincolnshire and first Saturday I went down to Lincoln and I went in a shop for a packet of cigarettes they’d got some loose, cigars on the counter, I thought I’ll have one of those, I thought well nobody knows me round here, so I lit it and walked up the road, I hadn’t gone above 20 yards and one of my shop mates was coming down the road! Well he told ‘em at work he says "he were walking down High Street" he says "at Lincoln as if he owned half of the town, puffing cigar smoke all over the place." They didn't half pull my leg over that, because I have never walked about smoking a cigar, you know what I mean. when I used to smoke ‘em, I’d always be either sat down or somewhere."

That’s all we had time for. But what are your recollections of people’s smoking habits, people's attitudes to smoking, and the reasons things were different in your young day? Please let us know - the Introduction page has details of how to get in touch with us.

Please note: This time the numbers are the house numbers.