Honoured at long last for a life lived less ordinary
PUBLICATION OF BIRTHDAY MEMORIAL BOOK TO THE PITMAN POET
FOR Tyneside pitman poet Joseph Skipsey, it was a tough start to what would prove to be a remarkable life.
Born in 1832 as the youngest of the eight children of a miner in Percy Main in North Tyneside, he began work in the local colliery at the age of seven as a trapper boy.
He taught himself to read and write by the light of a candle deep underground as he opened and closed a door to permit ventilation and the passage of the pit coal tubs.
In an interview with Pall Mall magazine in 1889, he said: “Mostly I sat in the darkness of the mine, but sometimes I had a piece of candle, which I stuck against the wall with a bit of clay. I amused myself by drawing figures upon the trap door and by trying to write words.”
As his family was too poor to provide him with a decent set of clothes, he could not go to Sunday school to continue his quest to read and write, but instead worked alone on his words on that day of rest in the garrett of his home. Yet Joseph went on to write and have published poems, songs and ballads which won the admiration of the leading lights of the time. His admirers included William Morris, leader of the Arts and Crafts movement, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, W B Yeats, and Oscar Wilde. Joseph’s life as a miner – and hewing coal was very hard work – was interspersed with spells as assistant librarian at the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle and custodian of Shakespeare’s birthplace at Stratford upon Avon. What is the 185th anniversary of his birth is marked by a new book, The Pitman Poet of Percy Main, by Dr Keith Armstrong and Peter Dixon. The book, supported by North Tyneside Council, is the latest publication by Northern Voices Community Projects, run by Keith from Whitley Bay and Peter, who lives in North Shields. It costs £3.50 from North Tyneside libraries and Keel Row bookshop in North Shields, and £5 by post from Northern Voices
at 35 Hillsden Road, Whitley Bay, NE25 9XF.
The Lit and Phil post was secured for Joseph by his long time friend Robert Spence, who was a lawyer, politician, educator, social reformer and writer who lived at Bensham Grove villa in Gateshead.
The house was visited by prime ministers – Gladstone and Asquith; authors - Thomas Hughes, of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Hilare Belloc and Arthur Conan Doyle; explorers - Sir Henry Stanley, of Dr Livingstone fame and Artic adventurer Fridtjof Nansen, and a long line of artists. And, of course, Joseph Skipsey.
On Tuesday, Northern Voices and the Workers Educational Association held an event to celebrate the 185th anniversary at the listed Bensham Grove, which was given to Gateshead Council by the Spence Watson family in 1948 as a centre for adult education.
The gathering contemplated how Joseph’s father, Cuthbert, has been shot dead when his son was only four months old.
The incident happened during a clash between striking miners and special constables outside the Pineapple Inn at Chirton in North Shields.
The special constable who fired the shot was later found guilty of manslaughter. In 1852 Joseph left the mine and Percy Main, and walked most of the way to London, where he was to meet his future wife, Sarah Ann Fendley, who ran the boarding house where he stayed. The couple had eight children. But their second son, William, was killed at the age of three by a runway waggon on a waggonway in Gateshead. They were dealt another devastating blow when they lost three of their children in the course of one month in 1861.
Cuthbert, 13, Emma 21 months and Harriet, six, died from scarlet fever.
Joseph wrote in the family Bible: “Three more lovely and affectionate children were never born in this world.”
He did not stay long in the Lit and Phil job before returning to the mines. The family moved between Gateshead, Backworth, Blyth and Elswick in Newcastle.
In 1889 Joseph, backed by testimonies from a line of prominent figures, took the job as Shakespeare custodian at Stratford.
But two years later he and Sarah, disenchanted by the way the Stratford venue was run, were back on Tyneside.
Joseph died, aged 71, in 1903 at his son’s home in Kells Gardens, Low Fell in Gateshead.
One of his mining poems, Get Up, is included in the Penguin Book of English Verse and the Penguin Book of Victorian Verse.
The only memorial to Joseph in his Percy Main birthplace is no longer named after him.
Skipsey Court was a council sheltered housing block where refurbishment was completed last year. The property is now called Percy Lodge.
North Tyneside Council said the name change followed a vote by the block’s 18 residents, from a list of suggested options including Skipsey Court, Skipsey Lodge, Tyne View, Tyne Court and Percy Lodge.