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Very true

My father in law was an industrial blacksmith at Palmers shipyard. He actually lived in Howdon directly opposite Jarrow across the Tyne. I believe he travelled over daily by ferry  (Howdon was only 5 or so streets and was demolished when they built the Tyne tunnel - the northern exit is close to where his street (Barresford Street) used to stand). His name was John Edward Scorer (aka Jack), born in 1907.
Everyone was badly hit when Palmers closed, including Jack, and so he joined the men on the march, though his name isn’t on the list. He got as far as the outskirts of London when he collapsed (I suspect not just from exhaustion but from malnutrition as well). The family all told me what a state he was in when he returned home, and it took him several months to recover. The family were all very proud of him being a marcher, and he did tell me something of it too, but I was very young then and didn’t take much notice as I should have.
As you know Palmers did re open later as a result of the march, as they were subsequently given two ships to scrap, the Olympic (sister ship to Titanic) and the Mauritania. They removed the interior fittings which were sold off, and stripped out the hull prior to the ships being towed to Inverkeith in Scotland for final dismantling. Jack was well enough to return to the shipyard in time for the start of the work, and he worked on dismantling both ships.
Jack was allowed to keep a small amount of the teak decking and a piece of the copper pipe left over from Olympic. Many years later he used them to make me a table lamp, which I still have.
Sadly Palmers did later close but that brief time of work really did tide them over a very difficult patch.
Jack then moved back to work nearer home. Unfortunately the noise from his blacksmithing work led to deafness, and the heat burnt his retinas, so he ended up both deaf and blind in old age, but lived until he was 94.
I don’t think today we have any comprehension of how tough life was for them. The boys in his house growing up didn’t even have a bed to sleep on, but rolled themselves in a blanket on the floor. Jack started work aged 7, taking out a donkey cart to sell milk for the farmer to the locals early every morning, before going to school (Stephenson’s Memorial School, I think it was at Willington).
He was a lovely man, very kind, and a very hard worker.

You are a star! Thank you. I’m very interested in the information he was a shoemaker as according to the UHF shoemaking was a strongly inherited trade, even after emigration’ - this may well tie up with another fragment I have - I’ll post it when I get home next week.

A Hugh HILDITCH was landlord of an inn in Ballyclare in 1800.

As my Hugh was from Ballyeaston I think his father - or grandfather - was Robert HILDITCH of Ballyhamage, as they worshipped at Ballyeaston at that time too. The other possibility is the John at Ballyboley, or the John at Balyalbanagh, but the more I think about it the more I think they were all the same family.

Part 3 of the children of Agnes and Hugh HILDITCH - the part that is very relevant to the information about the post above regarding Robert John Raymond HILDITCH or Hillrich or Helrich

7. Thomas born 1858. He worked in Belfast at Enfield house as a coachman to James Carlisle who owned Brookfield textile/ linen mills (and who commissioned the stunning Carlisle Memorial Church, in memory of his children, a son and a daughter, who died in their teens). Thomas married at St Anne’s Belfast in 1877, aged 21 to Isabella Raymond. His marriage certificate is under the name Hilrick, and his father is listed as Hugh Hilrick , labourer.  Like the rest of the family spelling wasn’t his best asset, as he used either Hillrick or Hillrich (in Canada) and sometimes Helrich. They had the following children

A. Robert John Raymond was born in 1877. ( he later married Caroline Harper in Montreal in 1889 and went on to have 3 children - Robert John Raymond  1898, who served in WW1; Marjorie Ruth Isabella, 1899, and Mary Alice Caroline, 1901-1902) . At some point he was in the army as this is mentioned on his Canadian attestation papers.

B. Mary Edith, known as Edith,  b 1879 who married Frederick Lewis ?of Winnipeg, and later moved to Toronto. 

C. Thomas b 1881 in Ireland. Died 1884 in Canada aged 2 from bronchitis.

D. Agnes Josephine, born 1883. She was disabled, never went to school, and needed care throughout her life. She died in 1964 aged 80.

At this point Thomas and Isabella emigrated, sailing  from Glasgow to Montreal, Canada in 1881. (It was a subsidised fare if you went to Canada). 

There they had

E. Another Thomas, 1886 - 1922 - he died in the military hospital, in Montreal resulting from being gassed in France in WW1, leaving his English wife a widow with 2 children, Jack 1919-1979 and Florence 1920- 2005. I was in contact with Florence for several years until her death. She explained her father had met her mother, Florence Annie Smith, in England whilst stationed there in WW1 and they married there in Hastings. Her mother would take her children to return regularly to see their grandmother, at one time the ship hitting an iceberg ( just about where Titanic had hit its iceberg) but fortunately stayed afloat.

Next came

F. Hugh Charles 1887 - 1951 (who married Antoinette Helena de Garmendia, and had Vincent Phillip (b 1919, killed in action in the RAF in WW2, buried 1944 Harrogate UK); Charles de Garmendia (1925-2012) , and Patricia (1927- 2010) and Isabelle Irene (2021-2003). Hugh Charles - known as Charles - was mayor of Beaconsfield in Canada 1936 - 1940.

G William George, 1890-1938, (m Florence Laven and had Gordon)

H. 1896 finally the twins Edgar ( married Lillian May Laley and had Grace, Irene, Peggy Constance and Richard Edgar James 1925-1971),

I the other twin was  Reginald  m Minnie Littler and had Mildred, Reginald Longshor Hillrich (1923-2007) and Ernest, and another son Francis Edgar William who died aged 1 year 7 months from diphtheria in 1928. .

(One of the twins - Edgar - visited my family during in WW1 and borrowed my grandfathers civvies to go out in - grandfather was not best pleased when he returned on leave and saw the state of it!)

Isabella died of a ‘brain congestion’ in 1900 and is buried in Mount Royal cemetery in Montreal, leaving Thomas to raise his children, some of whom were still quite young - the twins were only 4. Thomas joined her there after his death from cancer in 1930.


 8. The last child was Samuel, born in 1861. He went to Glasgow in the late 1870s with his mother and siblings, and was there in the census at Springfield Road Glasgow in 1881. However he returned to Belfast later, where he married Esther Jane McNally in 1888. They has two children Catherine (1889-1895) and Agnes (1892 -1894). Esther died in 1894 , and Samuel later remarried - to Mary Hall , in 1895, and went on to have two more children , Mary Ann (Minnie) in 1896 and Samuel in 1899. Samuel senior worked for Harland and Wolff and worked on the engines for Titanic.

My grandparents and father visited Samuel in Belfast in about 1935. My father remembered meeting young Sam, in Salvation Army uniform, and Minnie, and it doesn’t appear that either married.
Samuel himself died in 1937 in Bangor,where he had retired to.

As you may imagine it’s been quite a task teasing all this out, especially given some of the ‘interesting’ surname spellings. It wouldn’t have been at all possible without the information from grandfather, my own interest from a very early age, and the trees drawn up by my father which were a great starting point for the research.

I have a lot more fragments and given I’m no spring chicken it’s probably time I started to post them all here.