Lots of people know me as Kathleen. But when someone visited me Mam when i was born they said “Oooh little Pearl and big Pearl” she said ”That’s not going to happen!” So from then on they called me my middle name. I was born on Liverpool Street – the smelly end! Sometimes the town smelled real bad depending on the way of the winds. If it was blowing in from the sea – ooof! Now you hardly ever smell fish. But you’ve got to remember fresh fish doesn’t smell, it’s the bad that does. It was the fish meal factory that stunk. Me Dad was a fisherman and I remember the ‘knocking up man’ coming at 4am to get him because a tide was right. The ‘knocker up man’ had a stick with a wire on the end and rattled it on the bedroom windows, it sounded like a spider with clogs on. Clogs were the sound of Hull, everyone then wore clogs.
They called him Matt, me Dad, although he was George Mattinson. He used to go away for weeks and months on end and then come back with loads of goodies, or sometimes he didn’t get wages if they landed in debt. It depended on what they caught and also how many “settlings” they got. Settlings was a % of what the catch made. While you were away on a ship you used stuff from the ship store and you had to pay that off before you got wages. Sometimes you could come home with nothing if it was a poor haul. You weren’t guaranteed a good wage. This photo is when is when he came back from a long trip and he looks exhausted. They often had no time to recover before they went again.
He always tried to give 2 Bob into the ‘Ovel’. You could draw on it when you needed it, like a fund I guess. But he’d help others out if they had no money. Everyone tried to help everyone. You shared the good times and spread the wealth. I knew someone who use to be a prostitute to make money, as her husband never gave her an ‘allotment’, a wage. We‘d say “there by the grace of God, we wouldn’t want to be walking in her shoes”. If you sold your body to feed the kids there was no judgement. No one looked down on them.
Before I met my second husband I worked at Brekkes. Which was on the dock, I went there under the tunnel, I packed fish into boxes. The fish had been frozen, frozen and frozen again, it was a yellow colour. Often it got refused from where they sent it. It was a hard job, it was smelly but the people were nice. Then I went to Findus, I lived on Wellstead Street by then. I thought I’d gone to heaven. The fish was frozen just once and we had to cut it into pieces for dog food. We had to cut it small else people would eat it! Then I went to BirdsEye in Gypsyville. It employed 1000’s, when they closed in 2007 I got a medal.
My husband Steve died suddenly aged 31. He was a master plasterer, he did work in Beverly Minister. I had 4 kids. The baby, a 10 year old, one at 12 and one at 14. I remember when they came to tell me I was cutting sprouts. It was a terrible shock, I took to me bed. People rallied round. In my street I had family next door, and my mother in-law across the road. It was the family you clung to, like a drowning man.
During this time there was a knock on the door and a good looking fella trying to sell double glazing. I said me husband had just died and I wasn’t interested. He said “God was there for me, he was waiting to help”. I wasn’t a church person so I shut the door. I rang me sister two doors down and asked if he’d visited her. No. I looked out on the street and there was no one. It was a matter of minutes since he’d passed. But no one. I believe he was my angel. He helped me, him and my 14 year old daughter, who told me I had to get up. After I started going to St John the Baptists. They’re like an extended family. They had christened my kids but I wasn’t a regular. Back then everyone believed, but not everyone went.
My kids all have good jobs. One’s a teacher, a carpenter, one’s a nurse and the youngest works for the army in Germany as a civilian blacksmith. I’m proud. I didn’t want my girls to have a life like I’d had, working in a fish factory as a ‘pattie slapper’. Steve my husband was a clever man, he didn’t want the girls in a factory either. He wanted better too. I never wanted the boys to be fishermen, it was too hard and dangerous.
