The Midnight Mechanic

[Maggie/915]

A book on Wallsend has an interesting poem:-

My husbands a midnight mechanic

He works at the dead of night

And when he comes home in the morning

He is covered in -------

Turkish Delight

Recycling ash and human waste onto the fields.

My Dad earned a few pence doing the digging into the fields. Child Labour.

Anything was better than the soup kitchen or charity.

Times were hard in the 1930s Bedlington.

[Maggie/915]

Everyone is too young or to polite to talk about the Nettys.

Perfect recycling and no toxic fertilisers.

Everyone had bathrooms en suite because there was always a potty!

No pipes to freeze and no water leaking.

I am not arguing to go back to those days.

[Symptoms]

My Grandparents lived in the Prospect Hill station* house (West Allotment) in the early-mid 1950s. Over the rear lane there was a shared outside netty for the use of 3 families ... I can recall a wooden bench with a bum-hole, the proverbial nail/string/torn News of The World combo, wooden plank door with heart-shaped vent hole in it. The Council's night soil men would come once a week and use a big long rake to drag the stuff away to the end of the building and out through a steel door. My Grandad continued to use a potty even after moving to a new house in the mid 50s but his plan was to use the contents for his leeks ... I've posted here before about this in a Leek Show thread.

*Prospect Hill station was where the winching engine was for the inclined waggonway used to hump the coal trucks up from Backworth; they'd then release them down the otherside of the hill where gravity would sent them to the Tyne. The incline was still there in the 50s but obviously the tracks had long gone and even now you can see it on Google Earth.

[Maggie/915]

Very interesting.

My feeling is some of the pesticides we use are harmful.

A return to these old ways would not be allowed but it could prove to be recycling at its natural best. The leek growers knew the importance of human waste for the biggest and best leeks.

[HIGH PIT WILMA]

In the 1970's,we ,[myself and neighbouring allotment-holders,in Stakeford]used to go down to the sewage treatment plant, where Aldi/Jolley's/Homebase etc,is now,at Cowpen,and the guy in there used ti tip all the treated human waste out of the vats,and onto the open land nearby,to drain the fluid off.

There used to be pretty  big heaps of the grey stuff,almost odourless, except for the Formaldehyde  [?] odour,and the guy would say help yasell's ti as much as ye want,it saves me having ti gaan ti thi tip wi' it!!

We spread it across the allotment,and dug it in,in the autumn,and it was a really gud,natural fertilizer.

Can anybody else mind o' this free stuff?

I moved to West Terrace ,Stakeford,colliery hooses,in 1970,and we had the ootside netty,[although it was a flush toilet by then!],right up until 1984,when

I modernised the property after buying it from the Coal Board.

My next door neighbour,still had the original old toilet  pan,and high-up old cast-iron cistern,when I moved away,in 2001,and it is probably still there!