Yorkshire Almanac Winifred Stansfield is born unable to suckle at Balby (Doncaster)

3 March 1913: Winifred Stansfield is born unable to suckle at Balby (Doncaster)

Winifred Mary Renshaw. 1984. An Ordinary Life. Doncaster: Doncaster Library Service. Delightful and informative account of a working class childhood in the late 1910s/early 1920s – should be reissued. . Reproduction by kind permission of Doncaster Libraries. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

I was born in Furnival Road, Balby, in the third hour of the third day of the third month of 1913, and christened Winifred Mary in St. John’s Church.

For the first few days of my life I would not suck from the breast, though my mother had plenty of milk, and in consequence I cried incessantly from hunger.

Mum was in tears, and beginning to take a very dim view of motherhood, when the mid-wife discovered that I was “tongue-tied” and so could not suck properly. She cut the too-tight membrane under my tongue with the edge of a silver sixpence, and things improved rapidly, to the great relief of everyone.

In those days it was taken for granted that mothers would breast feed their babies. I don’t know whether there were any patent baby foods on the market, or whether mothers unable to breast feed had to depend on modified cows milk for bottle feeding. It was quite some years later that Glaxo burst upon the scene with its slogan, “Glaxo builds bonnie babies.”

In any case, bottle-feeding was more difficult. Sterilisation methods were rudimentary and in hot summer weather “summer diarrhoea” was a constant scourge, and accounted for a large proportion of the infant mortality rate.

More important to my parents, though, bottle-feeding was more expensive, and would make quite a hole in the family budget. So they were much happier when I was able to feed in the natural way.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Comment

Also:

I am the eldest surviving child of my parents. There was a girl born before me, but so premature (three months) that she survived only twelve hours. Just long enough to be washed, dressed, and christened Kathleen Annie. This last was very important to ensure a church burial. Later on we used to search for the pathetic little grave under a holly tree in the churchyard at Balby, but there was no headstone and it got harder to find as time went on. I expect it has disappeared by now.

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Comment

Also:

I am the eldest surviving child of my parents. There was a girl born before me, but so premature (three months) that she survived only twelve hours. Just long enough to be washed, dressed, and christened Kathleen Annie. This last was very important to ensure a church burial. Later on we used to search for the pathetic little grave under a holly tree in the churchyard at Balby, but there was no headstone and it got harder to find as time went on. I expect it has disappeared by now.

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Similar

25 December 1923: Winifred Stansfield of Balby (Doncaster) gets her doll

8 October 1671: The infant Walter Calverley suffers the first of several near-fatal accidents

1 December 1773: 2½ days after leaving London, legal clerk Foster Powell walks into York, rests briefly, and starts back

30 January 1709: Charles Boswell, king of the gypsies, is buried at Rossington, Doncaster

25 August 1840: Debating the teetotal vegetarian Frederic Lees at Rotherham, the Wesleyan James Bromley calls the pledge unchristian, and “alcohol-free” wine undrinkable

18 September 1831: William Wallett, an unemployed Hull clown, sets out to walk from Tickhill to Doncaster for the St Leger in home-made clothes

15 October 1645: Unable to distinguish Cavaliers from Roundheads, Lord Digby’s victorious Royalist army flees the battlefield at Sherburn in Elmet and is destroyed

13 July 1503: On her way to marry James IV of Scotland, Margaret Tudor (13) is met between Sirowsby and Doncaster by a euphonious sheriff

21 March 1880: The surgeon Thomas Pridgin Teale tells Leeds fathers to get involved in their children’s early years

4 September 1947: Conflicting hopes for the future of the nationalised coal industry, as a wildcat strike against increased hours at Grimethorpe spreads through the South Yorkshire coalfield

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Comment

Re this wave of unofficial strikes:

Major-General Sir Noel Holmes, chairman of the north-eastern division of the National Coal Board, in a statement yesterday on the strike at Grimethorpe Colliery, said that 140 coal-face workers, out of 2,682 employed at the pit, were not doing a fair day’s work. A committee representing management and workmen had decided that the stint for the 140 workers should be increased by 2ft., but they refused to accept its findings and came out on strike. The other coal-face workers came out in sympathy. “As much as I dislike mentioning this fact,” said Sir Noel Holmes, “it is only right to recall that at Grimethorpe since January 1, 1947, and before the present strike, there have been 26 sectional unofficial stoppages, which have lost 33,000 tons of coal to the nation. The present stoppage up to date represents a further loss of more than 40,000 tons.” (Times 1947/08/27)

Holmes’s Wikipedia article curiously doesn’t mention this phase of his career.

I’m guessing that the Welsh ex-Puritan authoritarian Communist Arthur Horner is the voice of the NUM in the above – see e.g. the Times for 9 September.

Interesting comments on the wartime coal boards by T.S. Charlton, colliery manager at Cortonwood:

The management of the collieries is in the hands of men trained primarily in management of mines and miners. They have a working knowledge of all the machinery available and how best it can be used, but the details of this side are left to the mechanical and electrical engineer. Labour costs are two-thirds of production costs, and therefore the handling and the best use of men are of the greatest importance to managers. Why it should have been decided that labour leaders should be good labour directors is, apart from the political issue, difficult to understand, unless it is on the old adage of “poacher turned gamekeeper.” Unless and until the production director has control of his labour side, I can see little hope of his schemes proving effective.

The miners have put forward suggestions to improve output, but they appear to do no more than improve the position of the miner. Can it be said that any suggestion already put forward by the men has put up the output figure? Why should it be assumed the men’s side of the pit production committees should be able to improve output in any way? Their training, inclinations, and very job depend upon their obtaining the best for their electors rather than for production.
(Charlton 1943/12/01)

Charlton was clearly a clever and capable man – it would be good to know more about him.

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