A Barber, a Crab Lady, a Chimney Sweep and a Bookie
Jim
There was a lot of characters lived in that area. Some of them I can tell you about now. From Carter Street, there was a guy called Billy the Barber and he had a little Barber shop on The Green. And he used to walk past our house every day away to his little business. And the thing about Billy the Barber, he only had one leg. He had a false leg. And when he was in his shop, If his leg started to ache, he used to often take his false leg off and he used to park it in the corner of his shop. And it was quite unnerving when you were sat there having your hair cut, looking at this leg in the corner. He used to sit on a stool and finish the haircut, you know. So sometimes he’d start the hair with his leg on and finish it with his leg off and you’d have two different sizes of the hair either side of your head. That would be early to mid 50s.
There was one house in the street, which was the big house, and it was right in the middle of Carter Street. And this House was at least twice the size of the other houses in the street, and it was in the wrong place really. It should have been somewhere else, not Carter Street. So when you went through the front door, it was palatial. The hallway was beautiful, the staircase was beautiful, and the house was owned by a lady and she was one of the old crab ladies, dressed in the black shawl. Now she had a very good business. She was a very wealthy woman. And you would see people go to the front door and they would knock at the front door and the door would open and you would go in. And I know all this because I was regularly in this house for some reason, I don’t know why. But in the backyard there was a lot of tin baths full of crabs and willocks and whatever she had for sale. And she would give you whatever you wanted. Go into her little scullery or pantry, whatever it was. I mean, it was a big house, but she only had two rooms at the back. I think she must have let her rooms off. But she sold her stuff from her pantry at the back. Now then, the back door was always open. She ran another business. She was also a money lender and anybody that wanted money used to come in the back door. If you wanted to buy fish and crabs, you went in the front door. So, you came in the back door and anybody coming through the back door, she knew what you wanted. And it was, “Hello, pet, hinny. What do you want?” “Can you lend us a couple of pound?” And she would take them into a little room, get her little book out, write the name in, then she would disappear into her bedroom that was just off. We’ve all had a tin box under the bed with a few quid in it. She must have had a few. She used to come out with the pound notes, “There y’are pet, there y’are pet. Got your name in the book.”
The Almshouses, the ones that have been pulled down, well on the end of there, there was a big house. There was a chimney sweep lived in there and the house seemed as though it was elevated because the bank went down. And he used to come in every night and we often used to stand watching him. And they had a big conservatory if you like, but it looked more like a greenhouse stuck on the side, but it was right up in the air. And he used to come in there with his dish, shirt off, black arms up to there, black face and started getting washed in the dish. And he knew we were watching him sometimes and he’d turn around and grin and his white teeth used to show on his black face.
Outside the Almshouses, there was a pub called The Black Bull, it’s still there. There was a guy, which Pauline just reminded me of this morning, called Jimmy the bookie and he used to stand there with his big camel hair coat on with pockets about this size. People used to turn up and they used to put bets on. But there was often a policeman would walk around there and Jimmy would disappear into the bar and there’d be a pint standing for him on the bar. He never ever drank it and then back out again and everybody knew he was there. They used to all come and put their bets on.
This memory is part of the Bishopwearmouth Heritage Scheme collection