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... Jack Branston wrote that this lady lived on the corner of Victoria Street and Button Row and that she took in lodgers, many of whom worked as navvies on various jobs in the district.....
Mrs. Navvy Adams was called Thirza, and she was married to a navvy called John.
Jack wrote: “ She herself had a fairly large family, most of the house duties falling to her eldest daughters. The long kitchen table was scrubbed until it was as white as snow, the flagstones on the floor were very smooth and clean, sandstones being crushed to powder to secure this effect. Once you had seen this lady, you would never again forget her; she was always very prim and neat, always felt dressed up when she donned her white apron. At all times she wore a man’s flat cap, loved her clay pipe but puffed away at a briar pipe [a wooden pipe made from briar wood] now and again for a change .” Jack worked for the Co-op for many years, and he remembered that Mrs. Adams would go in every Monday and ask for a “ sixpenny knock-out bag ” for her pipe. This contained all sorts of tobacco that had fallen into the drawer bottom and was a mix of every kind of tobacco including Sweet Crop, Thundercloud, Bruno, Thick Twist, Honey Dew, and Warhorse. “ It was indeed a mixture but nothing came amiss to her, ” he added. She liked a glass of beer in the New Inn, and she joined in most public house games, had a gentle nature and was never unkind or aggressive.
Her descendants have a few anecdotes about this lady. One tells of how, on that scrubbed table, she had two long canes running down each side, and the men had to put their hands on the table; if anyone reached for their plates before she was ready she’d lift the canes up and they would all get their knuckles rapped. Another tale is that people could tell whether it was safe to talk to her by looking at which way her cap was turned. When she wanted the toilet in the pub she used to go into the Gents and hike her skirt up and empty her bladder along with the blokes. What a woman!
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Sullivan’s father referred to Thirza as “ Old Mother Adams. ” “Proper navvy people they were ,” wrote Dick, quoting his father. “They had two relatives on the stage: the Stoke Sisters. Violin players. Funny how a rough family like that married some decent people. She used to drink like mad, swear like a trooper, smoke an old clay gum-bucket pipe. Good hearted, though .” Sullivan mentioned some of Thirza and John’s children: “ Punch [Harry] got shipwrecked – never was right in his head after that. Then there was Min, a silly, fat bugger. Then there was Edie [Edith]. She married a decent feller as well, I met them at Ewden after the First War .” [The italics are where Dick is writing about what his father had told him] |
