| Description | Manuscript memoir, with occasional quotations of poetry or examples of the author's own verse. Covering a wide range of topics, including:
Pride in Heanor dialect, p1
Fletcher's lace factory on Derby Road, p1
Unemployment, changes in standard of living, starting work down Shipley Kilburn Pit at age 12, p2
Working conditions in the pit including ill health compensation claims, cruel treatment of working animals, p3
Mining disaster at Shipley Kilburn Pit c1905, resulting in the death of Arthur Cook of Cotmanhay. Pearce recalls the sudden noise, thick dust and total darkness, saying "To my childish mind I could not realise what had happened. It was still cracking and roaring - I thought the world must have come to an end, I felt that I was half buried and choking with dust", p4
Disappearance and presumed death of the Under Manager of Simon Pit near Mapperley, Tom Severn, in June 1918, p5, with poem on this subject on p5A
Transport: Hansom cabs, trains trams, pp5-6
Attendance at performances at the Empire and Hippodrome by "such top-top talent as Dan Leno, Vesta Tilly, Ella Shields, Harry Champion, Little Titch with his big feet & the King of Mirth George Robey, Marie Lloyd and yes George Formby, Father of the late George Formby & many others", p6
Public houses and the temperance movement, p8
Rev C E L Corfield, vicar of Heanor, p12
Langley Mill Boys School in his father's time as a pupil including description of corporal punishment, p13
Sunday Schools pp14-15
Sick Club, p15
Factory Girls, p17. "The only other choice was for girls if they could not find any work, was to go out service, this was to be a slave for the middle class, it was far better if they was luck to get out service for the wealthy class, but some time that was not too rosey".
Medicine before the introduction of the National Health Service, pp19-20
Pawn shops, p21
Home life, including recollections of music played in the home, p22
Local artists and musicians, pp26-28
Politics: recalls listening to candidates giving speeches on Heanor Market Place, p29
Street Lighting in 1900, p30A
Early transport, pp32-34
Performing animals, p35
Discussion of nearby towns: Marlpool pp37-39, Langley p39
Efforts to get mining workfoce fully unionised, with anecdote about a miner who refused to join, p41
"Very lucky escape" from accident at Langley Pit as he was unable to enter a full lift which then crashed into the pit bottom resulting in multiple serious injuries. Pearce reflects that "I came back home, thinking I was the luckest young man on earth, they say a cat has as nine lives but a miner has one everyday, if he reaches his retirement all in one piece he is one amongst a hundred or more & how many people begrudge the price of coal, where there is blood on every lump", 42
Poem about Langley, p45
Poem about two Langley "yokels", twin brothers Joe Sly and Harry, p46
More about village "yokels" and personalities, pp47-52
Smalley and Shipley, pp53-57
Christmas, p58. "Though there was not a lot of money about Christmas was always a messy making time, all the children were told stories of Santa Clause [sic] & would shout up the chimney what they wanted this kind gentleman to bring them"
Poem: "Roland's Ragtime Band", pp59-60
Heanor Church, pp61-63
Closing poem: "Heanor", pp64-65 |