Batley Bob Woodhead - Article

Bob Woodhead

'Batley Bob' Woodhead

I first met Bob Woodhead in ‘the snug’ at one of the ‘Sunday Night at the Vic’ sing-a-long sessions in the early 1970s.

‘The Snug’ of the Victoria Hotel, Bradford Road, Carlinghow, Batley was out of bounds to non-performers on a Sunday night. Anyone who entered the room had to contribute to the evenings entertainment by singing a song, giving a recitation, or telling a tale. Bob was one of the performers there and I immediately struck up a friendship with him.

At the time Bob, an ex-miner, was working as a biscuit machine operative at Fox’s Biscuits in Batley.

Bob had many songs and ditties notably, ‘The Rose, the Thistle and the Shamrock Green’, ‘The Land of the Harp and Shamrock’, (For the words to these, see The Batley Irish Connection pdf), as well as ‘The Orderly Man’, ‘The Maypole Mine’, and ‘McCarthys Lodging House’, all three of which are included below.
He had learnt them mainly from his father Herbert, who like Bob was an ex-miner, of Irish descent from County Mayo, but had also been a stone quarrier and on his retirement was gravedigger at Batley Cemetery.

Bob lived on Purwell Hall Road in Batley in a row of terraced houses bordering alongside Mount Pleasant, home of Batley Bulldogs Rugby League Football Club, and being a keen Knur and Spell player, he was often to be seen practicing with his Knur and Spell on the Rugby Pitch.

He had worked at Thornhill Combs Colliery until its closure in 1972. He told me at the Pithead there was a blackboard with two short verses chalked on it, one a homily and the other a prayer, and it was Bob’s job to re-instate them if they had become rubbed out.

Thornhill Combs Colliery circa 1855 - 1972
Painting by Michael Milner.

Bob only drank at weekends and holidays and I used to meet him and his wife ‘Little Helen Carney’ at their favourite watering hole, The George Hotel on Wellington Street, Batley. Though they had been married for many years his wife was still known locally by her maiden name. Helen, being short of stature, always sat at the bar on a high stool and Bob always stood beside her. I never knew him to drink anything else but bottles of Guinness and he told me he had
called his daughter Patricia after the ‘Lady Patricia’, the boat that ferried Guinness from Dublin to be bottled in England.

Bob had two short mining related songs which he had learnt from his father Herbert, ‘The Maypole Mine’ and ‘A Lot of Little Blackbirds’. The first one relates to a mine at Wigan in Lancashire where a disaster happened in 1908, whether it was written locally by Batley miners in support of the Lancashire ones, or because they knew the County Mayo victims is open to conjecture.

Postcard published in 1908 to raise funds for the victims of the Maypole colliery disaster.

The Maypole Mine

You talk of your soldiers and sailors
Brave deeds they have done o'er the foam
But what of the boys that work down the mine
Little of them may be known.
They go to work every morning
With many a joke and a laugh
Little they know of the dangers that waits
As they go down the shaft,
But there heroes, British Heroes
With hearts that are true & brave
Risking their lives for children & wives
Down in the darkened cave.
Toiling for mere assistance
Down where the sun never shines
May God protect our collier lads
Down in the Maypole mine.

The Maypole Mine Disaster

The incident happened at Abram Colliery, Wigan, Lancashire on 18th August,1908.

The first explosion occurred on Tuesday the 18th of August 1908 at 5.10 p.m., there were 84 men below ground at the time and only three escaped. The colliery manager on returning home from holiday heard a rumble. He saw a dense cloud of black smoke pouring out of the pit shaft. So he went to the Pit and formed a rescue party. During the rescue operations three men were found alive and sent to the surface. All the others found were seen to be dead.

The inquest into the disaster was opened two days later and was adjourned after 23 days, 56 witnesses having been called. At the time of the inquiry only 7 bodies had been recovered and accidental death verdicts were recorded on the other 76 victims.

On Sunday 14th, September 1908 another series of explosions occurred. So it was decided to flood the Mine to extinguish the fire. The recovery of most of the remaining bodies was not completed until 8 July the following year, but the last body was not recovered until 1917.

King Edward V11 sent a telegram expressing his sympathy towards those who suffered as a result of
the disaster.

Of the 76 listed victims most of the miners were from the local area but 4 were from Charlestown, County Mayo along with some others from the West of Ireland.

Reference: Wikipedia

Miners leaving Shawcross Pit, Dewsbury,
after completing a shift underground

A Lot of Little Blackbirds

I'd hardly gone to bed
When the missus gave a knock
Shouts to me get up
It's nearly four-o-clock.
With me pick there
And me mining tongs
Off I have to go
If it’s raining cats and dogs
So early in the morning.
Deep down into the mine.
For we work like niggers
We look so sweetly figures
All among the coal, God Bless you
Works all day for very little pay
Now that’s what keeps us in the rain
For we go down white
And up we comes at night
Like a lot of little blackbirds in a cage.

Old photo of man laying and cementing bricks in a wall

An Old Fashioned ‘Brickie’.

An Old Fashioned Bricklayer

Just an old fashioned Bricklayer with hammer and trowel
An’ his lines they are knotted all through.
Just an old fashioned kit bag where he puts his tools,
When the toil of the long day is through
Though he’s got a red nose it’s with booze I suppose
Still there’s something that makes him divine
When the sub-man comes round
He says I’ll have ten pounds
That old fashioned bricklayer of mine.

Another little song extolling the virtues of manual labour.
I don’t recall Bob giving me this but I found it recently on a scrap of paper in a file in the attic. I immediately recognised Bob’s handwriting.
It is a parody of an old song written in 1919, ‘That Old Fashioned Mother of Mine’, that was made popular by Talbot O’Farrrell in the 1920s and then a hit for David Whitfield in 1960.

'The Orderly Man' is another song Bob learnt from his father, about the hardships of life in the army.

The Orderly Man

And now kind friends I've been called upon to sing a little song
And if you'll pay attention then it won't take very long
I'll sing it out without a doubt, I'll do the best I can
And I'll tell you how in the army, boys, I was the orderly man

Twas on a morning church parade I was an orderly man
The orderly sergeant said to me, clean every dish and can
The company officer will be round it is Lieutenant Bran
And if every things not tidy then God help the orderly man.

The night before all our corps, had been upon the booze
I reported sick next morning just to try and get excused
The doctor only laughed and starts, sez listen hear my man
Get into marching order now, likewise an orderly man.

I put my pack upon my back and on parade I went
The sergeant said I was crummy, but I had to be content
I was late as well as dirty and the officer began
Ten days CB said he to me, I cursed being an orderly man.

And when he looked down the rifle boys ‘twas there you see the fun
He said it was more like a chimley pot than it was like a gun
He told the sergeant major to parade me round at one
But I had to fetch the dinner for I was the orderly man.

And now my friends my time is up soldering I'll do no more
I care not for the YLIs or any corps no more
They can keep their guns their two pounds ten and do the best they can
For they'll not get me for another six years to be an orderly man.

old photo of men in ww2 army fatigues peeling potatoes

'Spud bashing.'
A fatigue party peels potatoes.

Many soldiers in the army were often given punishment for trivial misdemeanors, being unshaven, untidily dressed, not saluting or addressing officers correctly, being late on parade or after curfew.

As a punishment they were put on ‘Jankers’, this meant not only CB, Confined to Barracks but a lot more than what the name implies. Not only were you forbidden to leave the barracks, but also had to report to the guardroom for early morning inspection, were banned from the canteen at morning NAAFI break, and had to parade behind the guard at evening guardmounting in full Battle-Order. This was then followed by two hours of fatigues, scrubbing, polishing or 'spud-bashing'.

Chimley pot, chimney pot,
YLI, Yorkshire Light Infantry,
spud-bashing, potato peeling.

Bob's Ditties

Bob sang me a trio of ditties, 'Ali Baba's Camel', 'The Picture', and 'The Captain Said I’ll Stick to my Ship', which he always sang as a medley. They appear to be snippets of much longer original songs. They all come from the Music Hall Tradition and were written and first recorded in the early 1900s.

I have included these, along with another of his ditties about a circus acrobat, 'Tim Moloney' in my article Music Hall Memories on this site, under the heading Bob Woodhead's Mainly Music Hall Ditties.

McCarthy's Lodging House
(Sung to the tune of 'The Garden Where the Praties Grow')

Now McCarthy was the keeper of a tumbledown affair,
He had a scraggy moustache and some lovely locks of hair.
He had a pair of trousers that were made before the flood
And at nine o’clock each morning you could wash yourself in blood.
Oh the cat was nearly strangled in the soup was a mouse
And it poisoned all the lodgers in McCarthys Lodging House.

Pay your fourpence daily was the motto on the wall
And if you didn’t pay it, it was God help you all
A penny was the price of a slice of dripping bread
And if you ate it, you woke up next morning dead.
We were happy and contented and we didn’t care a louse
When we all lived together in McCarthy’s lodging House.

Bob stopped singing there, but said there a final verse about “tuppence was the price to sleep upon the rope”, but he couldn’t recall it.

Many lodging houses sprang up in the Batley and Dewsbury area in the early 1900s to cater for the influx of the Irish immigrants who came to the area, seeking the work that was plentiful in the mills and rag warehouses. Most of these were single men who had left their families back in Ireland to find work in the booming ‘Shoddy Trade’.

The lodging houses provided cheap bed and breakfast. The men slept in long whitewashed rooms, in rows of beds, and were charged four pence (4d) per night for bed and board.

Sleeping on the rope in a lodging house

Those less able to afford the money, for two pence (2d), they could ‘sleep upon the rope’. A rope was stretched across the room and while sat side by side on a long bench, the men would flop over the rope to stop them from falling off in their sleep. This was known as a ‘tuppenny hangover’.
It was commonplace for them to get a rude awakening in the morning when the boarding house keeper would untie one end of the rope and the sleepers would all end up on the floor.

Bob told me that one of the last Irish lodging houses in Batley was run by a Mrs. Skeffington. Many others took in an Irish lodger to help them eke out a living. I remember Kathy Lyons' mother Marion marrying her lodger, Peter McClune from Mayo. On a Sunday night in the Vic they would often sing ‘Moonlight in Mayo’ as a duet.

Batley Skylark Singing Club

One Friday evening in ‘The George’ in Batley, Bob Woodhead happened to mention that his father had been a member of Batley Skylark Club and his birds regularly partook in the Skylark Singing Competitions in the 1930s.

I arranged to meet him at his home the following Sunday. I arrived at his house armed with a portable tape recorder I’d borrowed to record his recollections. I transcribed the tape, and have given the resulting article it's own page on this website: Batley Skylark Singing Club.

There were three other short, part remembered, songs I recorded from Bob. I’ve included them here for posterity.

The Old Home

T'morn tha leaves the old home Jim
T'morn tha going away
Thar going among the city fowk t'dwell
So said a grey haired mother
To her son one summers day
But if thi minds made up
I wish thee well
But the old home will be lonely
We'll miss thee when thar gone
The birds wont sing as sweet
Whilst thar away
And if friends tha hasn't any
In thi pocket not a penny
Then tha'll allus find a welcome
Here at home sweet home.

An Old Fashioned Cot

In an old fashioned cot what’s seldom now seen
With everything spotless and clean
By the fire side sits an old woman and man
Awaiting there son of seventeen
Just when he entered he said to his dad
Oh father I’m going to be wed
I’m sorry cant give you my wages this week
Then his father returned and he said
As the birds build their nest
They desert them my lad
Tha leaving thi father and mother
Though thous only been bring us wages short while
Still tha fancies tha can keep another
Tha forgets all these years that we toiled
And some day thall wish tha could come
Back again my poor lad, to the mother and dad
And thall sigh for this old rustic home

Twelve months had passed bringing sorrow and tears
When a loud knock was heard at the door
I’m near dead with hunger and nigh dead with cold
Let me in the voice cried once more
The father said no, but the mother said yes
Forgive him the poor lad she cried
I can forgive, but never forget
And the tears slowly rolled from his eyes.

The Cricketer's Song

Well good evening friends
of cause you all know me
I’m the most famous cricketer
You ever did see
When Bradman saw me his face did beam
He said, I’ll put you up
Against the Australian team
So they sent a committee down to see me play
At eleven o-clock we commenced next day

The first time I went on that green
I bowled a maiden about eighteen
The bowler said get off that flat
So I hit him on the head
With the blade of mi bat

The second ball I got made every body stare
I knocked it five miles up in the air
My feet went sprawling all over the place
One foot got fast, in the wicket keepers face
The Umpire said get off that flat
So I hit him on the nose
With the handle of mi bat.

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