In era of Twitter, thank heavens for written word

WHEN the most extraordinary things are to be found with a click on your phone, it can seem strange to be searching through old books.

Last week I was in the splendid Northumberland Archives at Woodhorn Colliery Museum, looking for my great grandmother.

Actually, she’s my great, great, great, great grandmother Elizabeth Fawcus nee Archbold (1796-1891) and I was handling some awesome tomes from the County Asylum, Morpeth dating back 150 years.

I knew she’d be there because I’ve seen the digital record of the 1881 Census.

Online, there’s her ‘inmate’ address and the bald, shocking, description of my great grandma – the ‘lunatic.’ With all the fear that description conjures, I was slightly relieved when I tracked down her admission record for July 22, 1879.

I took some comfort from the careful handwriting and the names of three doctors involved.

Elizabeth was admitted from Alnwick Workhouse described as physically ‘feeble’ with ‘senile dementia’. Further on there’s a concluding note of her death, a full 12 years later, on October 13 1891.

Great Grandma lived to be 95. I sometimes wonder if there’s more to the idea of asylum than our modern psychiatric services might be willing to consider?

Particularly when frail, sometimes elderly people, perhaps suffering mental illness, are seen apparently homeless on the streets of 2022.

At an earlier stage, Elizabeth ran the Ship Inn, now a very attractive part of the region’s tourist offering, at Low Newton.

Some small part of Elizabeth Fawcus’ genetic legacy will be part of me and hundreds of others, I’m sure there’s lots more for us to research.

My main purpose, though, was with trade unionism and the records of the ‘Northumberland Miners Mutual Confident Association’.

I was preparing for a workshop marking May Day, International Workers Day, in Newbiggin-by-the -Sea.

When Newbiggin Colliery opened in 1908, the leader of almost 30,000 Northumberland miners was Joseph English from Ashington and the book of minutes from 1907 records his election as their President in May that year. When I consider some of my contributions to various meetings I’m sure there’s nothing more boring than some of last month’s minutes, never mind any which last 115 years.

However, this substantial, blackbound book, about the size of a hard -backed novel, had me enthralled.

This isn’t a verbatim record, I’m sure it’s the better for that.

Nevertheless the recording is quite detailed and yet it somehow flows. There’s a grace and gentility about the deliberations of these men (of course they are all men) from Barrington and Burradon, Cambois, Choppington and Chevington, Cowpen and Crofton and Seghill, Pegswood and Walbottle and 400 more, long-closed workplaces.

There’s an authenticity about their deliberations on ‘checkweighing’ and the ‘price for double working’, the length of hewers’ shifts and the ‘payment for lamps’. These people knew what they were talking about.

Moreover, there’s firm resolution in the negotiations with coal owners pleading poverty, despite the record of considerably increased production. There’s evident satisfaction, even though the claim had been for a 10% pay increase and this time they settled for five.

Sometimes, there’s an awkwardness in the writing – ‘Mr English feelingly replied’ – which reminds you these are working people, recording their own deliberations.

Despite possibly being from the first generation to have benefited from compulsory primary education, they would have been down the pit aged twelve.

Then there’s the ability to look way beyond coal mines and Northumberland to support other workers in other industries and to attend an international conference of coal miners in Salzburg.

Apparently there are more than 100 such volumes, dating back to 1875, among a very considerable coal mining archive.

Some may reject the comparison but while I look forward to viewing the Lindisfarne Gospels at the Laing Art Gallery in October I reflect these are documents you can still touch and hold and weigh.

Of course these minute books are 1,000 years more recent, they aren’t exquisitely illustrated and perhaps some of them don’t read as well as the one I’ve so far seen.

However, this one is a great historic document, recording a time when life and landscape around us was transformed.

It evidences the work of fine people, who a generation later founded the welfare state and nationalised industries, much of which we have now lost. There is huge learning in these pages, they are part of the legacy of Northumberland.

The ‘world’s richest man’ has just bought Twitter and a click on our phones can access global rubbish and misinformation and pornography - even from the chamber of the House of Commons.

Thank goodness there is still proper writing and information to be discovered. Written in Northumberland by people living here.

Full of humanity and decency and authenticity and truth.

Now there’s a good message for May Day. ‘Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains’ and so much to learn from our past.

Despite possibly being from the first generation to have benefited from compulsory primary education, they would have been down the pit aged twelve