Notes for Veronica McGough: MAC GOFF (Celt.) SON OF GofT, q.v.
MAC GOUGH (Celt.) SON OF Gough or G off, q.v.
1913 South Shields
1926 Thurcroft
Aug 1936 71 Girlington Road, Bradford Occupation: In service
Below is a copy of an incomplete autobiography written by Veronica Riley.
Scrapbook of Memories
It was a hot day, June 17th 1912 that I was born in the mining village of Grange Villa, Co. Durham.
Times were very hard, so I was told, there being a miner’s strike which lasted some weeks. This was settled just a week or two before my birth. That must have caused my father to go and get work at Harton Colliery and for us all to go and live in South Shields which was more or less some 10 to 12 miles away. I was then 11 months old.
It was there my brother Edward was born, he has always been known as Eddie. We lived there for some five years.
I started school there only half time, one week in the morning and the next week afternoons. This was because The Great War was on and the troops occupied most schools for billets. Food was very short, people had to queue for meat, marg, butter and sugar and many other things. In 1918 food rationing came in and then it evened things out a bit. I stood in queues with mother.
On the 16th of October 1918 my father was involved in a mine accident. He was taken to the Infirmary where he died a week later on the 22nd. He had a fractured skull.
I remember the funeral. Mine was the first name called out in the list of mourners. I sat in the first coach with my Grandfathers and stood at the grave side with them. Mother did not go it wasn’t the custom. Of course it was horses and coaches that was used then.
Mother and we children of six and four years old went to live with my grandparents.
Six months after my father’s death, mother had the furniture brought from South Shields. This was done by Uncles Joe and Ned, with the help of Teddy the mule. Teddy, having seen active service in The Great War.
About this time Uncle Tom got his calling up paper. Grandma cried, just as she had done when Uncle Jack was wounded and his blood stained uniform came home.
Then the war was over, in the November of 1918, and the celebration that we had the following summer. Tea for the kiddies in the street, fancy dress parade, bonfire and fireworks till late at night. I was there with mother until the very end which seemed very late.
Life seemed to settle down. My four uncles came home and we were a happy family of six adults and four children as grandma had two daughters much younger. Annie was two years older than I, and Elsie only ten weeks. They were my aunts, but we were more like sisters and Eddie had just to tag along since he was the youngest.
Annie and Elsie got scarlet fever and were taken to hospital in the fever van, as it was called. A man came and stoved the house. Eddie and I never got it. We had a fortnight off school to stop spreading infection. During this time Eddie fell in the burn and almost drowned. The bank on which he was walking gave way; there had been a lot of rain. He went under twice and I grabbed his hair and kept his head out of the water. I called Elsie and between us we got him out. We rushed him home. He didn’t want to go saying he would run about until his clothes dried. He was told he would get flu’ which was something to dread. Having heard the grown-ups talk about it and knowing people died from it. I was 9 years old then. He didn’t get into trouble when we got home; it was only then that we were told that he had been drowning.
Soon he was bathed and changed. I don’t think he was put to bed. Grandma’s kitchen was always warm. I never knew of the fire going out. At the back of the fire there was room for three buckets of coal just to be raked onto the fire as needed.
The men folk always saw to the coal. The fireplace was made of brick with a boiler at the end for hot water. A round drum shaped oven, all the cooking was done on the grate and oven.
There was one tap, cold water and no sink indoors.
The kitchen floor was so big it took ¾ of an hour to wash it, on hands and knees. Uncle Fred got married and as he left for the church he threw pennies and halfpennies for the children as the motor drove away. That was another custom. We had an ideal place to play down “the banks” as it was called. It consisted of a valley with the burn or small river in the bottom. The water was sometimes the colour of sand and said to have come from some pits. Nevertheless we loved this place with it’s trees to climb and often a rope tied to a tree and the boys would swing across the burn. It gave us freedom to play all sorts of games, cowboys and Indians. Many happy hours were spent there.
We lived at Grandma’s some five years or so. Then mother went to keep house for her brother Fred, his wife had died.
Whilst at Uncle Fred’s I started violin lessons which I enjoyed. Also we changed schools, we had a 3 mile walk. We took sandwiches and a flask of tea or cocoa for midday.
Wintertime there was only 1 hour for lunch, that was so school finished at 3.30. The children who lived a long way had chance to get home before it was dark. There were very few street lights, lots of the roads were unlit and those were well-used roads.
In March 1925 Mother got a new council house. She had been trying to get another house ever since my Father’s death. Houses were in very short supply as no building had been done during The Great War.
This house was small but large enough for our needs, and it had a bathroom. There was a bath and flush toilet, hot and cold water, something we had never had before.
Even the school I attended had only cold water, three washbasins and toilets, that consisted of large water tanks flushed by some unknown means every now and then.
At fourteen I finished school that being the leaving age. I tried for work but then as now it was hopeless. There was the depression. People were very hard up in a different way to today. Their need and want was a good meal that many never had.
When I was fourteen my mother married again, and we moved to Yorkshire, a mining village named Thurcroft. It was from there I went into service at Eyam in Derbyshire.
The house was high upon a hill outside of the village. It was a house and a cottage which was where the kitchen was plus pantry, coal etc., which meant everything had to be carried upstairs. All the meals and coal for the fires. That meant two flights of stairs for some of the coal to be carried such as for the nursery fire. The carpets were swept on hands and knees with a hand brush and dustpan. There was a six-month-old baby whose washing I had to do as well as clean the nursery, which was where I slept.
On my day off I was taken by my boss at about 8am into Tinsley, as that was where he worked. Then I got a tram to Rotherham then by bus home. I used to get there by 10.30 or so.
Then I left home again in time to be picked up by the boss when he came out of work. The following week I stayed at home overnight. Of course when I got back my job I had to set the table and serve dinner, as well as helping to wash up.
It was hard work for 7/- (35 pence) a week. I lost weight, after having put some on after coming to Yorkshire. I had always been skinny.
I left that job after a few weeks. Mother was annoyed. Food was somewhat short (no bread the day I left). I stayed home as Mother was having Vincent.
More About Veronica McGough: Burial: 25 Jan 2005, Scholemoor Cemetery, Bradford . Child's Birth 1: 1937, Bradford. Child's Birth 2: 1940, Bradford. Child's Birth 3: 1946, Bradford.
More About Veronica McGough and Albert Riley: Marriage: 10 Aug 1936, St Patrick's RC Church, Westgate, Bradford, W. Yorkshire.136
Children of Veronica McGough and Albert Riley are:
Mrs Veronica McGough (b. 17 Jun 1912, d. 18 Jan 2005)
Notes for Veronica McGough:
