~ Chapter Ten ~
Life Oop North
If George returned to Margate after his demobilisation, we know it would not have been for long, because the next time we hear of him it’s coming up for Christmas in 1919, he’s living in Oldham in the north-west of England and he’s about to marry a twenty-four year-old Lancashire lass called Nellie Taylor.
The marriage took place on 13th December in the Wesleyan Methodist Church, Greenacres Road, Oldham. On the marriage certificate, George described himself as a confectioner – an indication, perhaps, that his training and experience as a pastry cook before the War had stood him in good stead – while Nellie described her occupation as a cotton weaver. Both were staying at an address in Moorhey Street, one of the multitude of streets of nineteenth century red-brick terraced houses that characterised the town.
This is how Frederick Engels, the German industrialist and father of communist theory alongside Karl Marx, described Oldham and its neighbouring towns in his study, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844:
The marriage took place on 13th December in the Wesleyan Methodist Church, Greenacres Road, Oldham. On the marriage certificate, George described himself as a confectioner – an indication, perhaps, that his training and experience as a pastry cook before the War had stood him in good stead – while Nellie described her occupation as a cotton weaver. Both were staying at an address in Moorhey Street, one of the multitude of streets of nineteenth century red-brick terraced houses that characterised the town.
This is how Frederick Engels, the German industrialist and father of communist theory alongside Karl Marx, described Oldham and its neighbouring towns in his study, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844:
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At the time of George and Nellie’s marriage more than seventy years later, it is unlikely that Oldham’s “foul courts, lanes, and back alleys” would have changed much. Indeed, by then the town had reached its zenith as the world's manufacturing centre for cotton spinning. With more than three hundred mills operating day and night, its townscape was dominated by distinctive rectangular brick-built mills.
For George, that townscape must have been quite a shock to the system; the contrast between the sparkling seaside resort of Margate and the soot-stained industrial boomtown of Oldham could not have been greater. But shock to the system or not, George settled down with Nellie in her hometown, and in May 1923 Nellie gave birth to their daughter, Vera.
We don’t know anything more about George and his family until 1949. By then, they had traded Oldham’s “dingy” mills for the picturesque peaks of Derbyshire, having moved into a semi-detached house in Warmbrook Road in the village of Chapel-en-le-Frith in the Peak District. By that time, too, George was employed as a buyer for the Manchester branch of the famous Lewis’s Department Store, with an office on the fifth floor of the store’s landmark building in Market Street.
It seems that in the thirty years since he arrived in Oldham, just one more veteran of the “poor bloody infantry”, George had worked his way up the ranks to become a well-to-do businessman. But his successful career was about to come to an abrupt end.
For George, that townscape must have been quite a shock to the system; the contrast between the sparkling seaside resort of Margate and the soot-stained industrial boomtown of Oldham could not have been greater. But shock to the system or not, George settled down with Nellie in her hometown, and in May 1923 Nellie gave birth to their daughter, Vera.
We don’t know anything more about George and his family until 1949. By then, they had traded Oldham’s “dingy” mills for the picturesque peaks of Derbyshire, having moved into a semi-detached house in Warmbrook Road in the village of Chapel-en-le-Frith in the Peak District. By that time, too, George was employed as a buyer for the Manchester branch of the famous Lewis’s Department Store, with an office on the fifth floor of the store’s landmark building in Market Street.
It seems that in the thirty years since he arrived in Oldham, just one more veteran of the “poor bloody infantry”, George had worked his way up the ranks to become a well-to-do businessman. But his successful career was about to come to an abrupt end.