“I Deeant want ti Gan without ye”: A Staithes Childhood in the Museum Archives

What did it feel like to grow up in Staithes in the early twentieth century? What did children wear, what did they get up to, and what happened when you wanted to go to Sunday School but your clothes weren't quite up to scratch?

We can find out from an unlikely source: a life story written by the Reverend W. T. Mugford, who left Yorkshire for America and eventually became a Baptist minister. His booklet, From an English Pit to an American Pulpit, recounts a life of faith, family separations and extraordinary changes of fortune. But its opening chapters take us back to Staithes, where Walter spent his childhood.

A boy from the ironstone coast

Walter begins his life story with a description of his birthplace:

“In a humble Ironstone Miners cottage situated near the edge of the cliff on the bleak Rocky North East Coast of Yorkshire, England, I was born on April 15th, 1911.”

His arrival in the world was not especially auspicious. He tells us that he was known as a “Blue Baby” and that the family doctor apparently took one look at him and declared:

“He'll never live”

Walter adds, with the benefit of hindsight:

“but God had other plans for my life and in his goodness and mercy spared my life.”

His grandparents took on the responsibility of raising him. He suffered from fits throughout his early childhood, which made attending school difficult. One day, after setting off for school despite feeling ill, he remembered nothing more until he was told what had happened:

“They told me later that it took two people to get me home and put to bed.”

Eventually, the family moved from Boulby Cottages to Staithes, which Walter describes as the:

“quaint fishing village of Staithes about four miles away”

It was here that one of the most enduring memories of his childhood began.

A gansey, a pair of trousers and a new suit

Walter lived next door to the Congregational Church. Watching the other children go into Sunday School, he longed to join them. There was just one problem: his grandmother didn't think his clothes were suitable.

“I began to have a great desire to attend Sunday School; but was informed by my Grandmother that (‘My clothes were not good enough to appear in the Sunday School’).”

Walter's description of what he wore is wonderfully specific:

“a pair of clean but neatly pair of parched pants and a ‘GANZY’ or what is better known to us here in America as a ‘Sweater’”

His grandfather worked long hours for a small wage in the ironstone mine, so new clothes were a rare luxury. Walter remembers the trousers he wore before his new suit arrived:

“I had been wearing pair of brown trousers made out of a cast off old overcoat and the trousers made me look like a Blimp ready to cast off from her moorings.”

The sweater was “more cotton than it was wool”, and someone had given him a soldier's cap. He admits that he was:

“quite a strange looking sight”

Then, at last, came the glorious day when his grandfather announced that he would have a new suit.

“However, the great Day arrived and never will I forget that Glorious Sunday morning in early spring when to my wondering view I gazed with boyish rapture upon a grey tunic suit and some black sandals; (I can smell the newness of the rubber in them yet as if it were today), and a pair of long black woolen stockings, and to adorn my neck, ‘A stiff white Celliloid collar’”

There was, apparently, only one way to wear such an outfit:

“there was only one way in which to keep your head and that was ‘UP.’ Oh how I agonized in that hot and-horrible harness, but I felt it was worth it just for the pleasure of attending Sunday School.”

After strict instructions to look after his new clothes and behave himself, Walter set off:

“I strutted off to Sunday School to satisfy a childish curiosity.”

It's a wonderful scene: a small boy, dressed in his finest, heading down the village with his head held high — even if his stiff collar was proving a bit of a trial.

“I Deeant want ti Gan without ye”

Another of Walter's childhood memories takes us back to Boulby, to a family gathering around the fire. Several members of his family were already living in America, and it had been decided that his grandmother would join them. She could take one child with her: Walter or his aunt Hilda, who was just six months older than him.

Walter remembers the scene vividly:

“I can see yet the Kettle hanging on the hob over a red hot fire and I could hear the steam making a great sound which we said was ‘The Kettle singing’ and the family had been sitting in front of that cozy fireplace without any lamplight and just enjoying the firelight glow”

Then his grandmother asked the question that would change the evening:

“‘Well which one shall I take with me, I can only take one you know.’”

Walter and Hilda were sent into the bedroom while the adults debated. Behind the closed door, the two children clung to one another, listening to the voices in the next room.

“On the other side of that door two children were locked in each others embrace and weeping and in the quaint Yorkshire dialect one said to the other ‘I Deeant want ti Gan without ye’ in other words ‘I don’t want to go without you.’”

Walter even remembers what Hilda was wearing:

“I can see Hilda, yet, dressed in a long pink dress which would look much out of fashion with the girls of our day, and a broad sash around her waist with a large bow of ribbon on her hair.”

Eventually, they were called back into the living room. Their grandfather delivered the verdict:

“‘Hilda you shall go to America and Walter you shall remain in England’”

Walter continues:

“my aunt and I threw our arms around each other and sobbed again and cried out that we did not want to be parted.”

It is a deeply affecting memory, made all the more vivid by Walter's recollection of the kettle singing on the hob, the firelight and the words spoken in the Yorkshire dialect. He carries the memory of that separation into adulthood, remembering how, during the Second World War, he longed to be with Hilda as she faced the dangers of wartime America.

Singing around the village

Walter's Staithes childhood was also full of music. He remembered singing hymns with his Sunday School friends, including “Yes Jesus Loves Me”, “When He Cometh” and “There's a Friend for Little Children”.

He also remembered his first performance in front of a church audience, on what he calls “Standing Up Sunday” — or Anniversary Sunday — when the children stood up to recite or sing and received prizes for good attendance.

Walter had practised hard. His chosen hymn began:

“Have thine own way Lord, Have thine own wayThou art the potter I am the clayMold me and make me after thy willWhile I am waiting yielded and still”

His grandmother came to hear him sing. Her verdict?

“That my face looked like a Full Moon.”

Walter was undaunted. He soon began singing in the choir, where he was particularly enchanted by Miss Codling's playing on the church's pipe organ:

“it seemed as though she brought all the beautiful music of Heaven out of that instrument and into the Church Auditorium.”

Music followed him around the village. He would listen to singers at church or concerts, then return home and imitate them while going about his chores:

“whilst chopping the kindling wood or filling the coal Scuttle or going down to the Village pump I would mimic those whom I had heard sing”

And what did the neighbours think?

“I can assure you the comments of the Villagers were quite colorful and varied.”

Walter doesn't tell us exactly what they said. Perhaps the villagers' comments are best left to our imaginations.

A wish to return

Walter's life eventually took him across the Atlantic. He describes his conversion at a rescue mission in Chester, Pennsylvania, on 8 January 1929, and his subsequent journey towards the ministry.

Yet his memories of Staithes remained with him. He had kept in touch with Mr Webster, the Congregational Sunday School superintendent who had encouraged him as a child. After Walter's conversion, Mr Webster wrote him a letter of encouragement and invited him to preach at the church in Staithes if he ever returned to England.

Walter had not yet made the journey when he wrote his life story, but he had not forgotten the invitation:

“I have not up to this date made that trip, but if God makes the way possible someday I hope to fulfill a desire born in my heart the night I was converted and has remained there ever since, to preach to my friends in that little fishing village”

He ends the passage with one final hope:

“I also hope that Mr. Webster will still be alive to hear from my lips the wonderful Gospel Story. If he should not hear it on earth I feel he will hear it in the Glory Land.”

Finding Staithes in the archives

Walter Mugford's life took him a long way from the village where he grew up. But in the pages of his booklet, Staithes is still there: the gansey, the Sunday School, the village pump, the sound of the kettle on the hob, the music drifting out of the church and the voices of children speaking in the dialect of home.

These are the details that make an archive more than a collection of old documents. They let us hear people describing their own lives, in their own words — sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, and often both at once.

From an English Pit to an American Pulpit: The Life Story of Rev. W. T. Mugford is held in the Staithes Museum archives, where it forms part of the story of the people who have called this place home.

P.S. Whatever happened to Walter?

Walter's story didn't end when he left Staithes. A little digging online turns up traces of his later life as a Baptist minister in America — and even hints at a more mysterious chapter involving his disappearance. It seems there's more to discover about the boy in the gansey and the rather remarkable life he went on to lead!

Perhaps that's another story for another day…