Define: Pincher laddies

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: GUEST,mayomick
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 10:51 AM

There's a photos in Ultan's book showing the mass being said on one of the sites . What I don't seem to recall was any photos of the wet canteen . It seems inconceivable today that such an institution could have existed up until the sixties given the dangerous work the men were engaged in. The macho drinking culture was always facilitated by the contractors ;when there was a wet canteen it was literally institutionalised.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: ard mhacha
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 07:33 AM

Gurney sorry I can`t help you there.
Hobo,I met people from all over Ireland while I worked in England and lots of them while enjoying a drink didn`t always end `washed up` through excessive drinking.
I never met anyone who had to leave because of some crime petty or otherwise, they left because o there was nothing in the line of employment during the mid-1950s and I am speaking of the six counties and such was the situation in the 26.

I worked with English men the majority of whom were the salt of the earth, I had no trouble integrating and attending sporting fixtures with,
lots of Irish men did likewise, I still correspond with two of my cockney friends and exchanged visits with them, because I abhor most British politicians dosen`t mean I include every individual English man, I spent some of the happiest years of my life in England and I would be betraying great friends and workmates if I said different.

Getting paid daily by sub-contractors and working without paying national insurance caught up with lots of Irish `lumpers` who when they could no longer to do hard work were had to apply for relief of the British government,they were the people asking for assistance of the Irish government,I know plenty had to rely on their workmates to help them.

In all walks of life you have to make your way and too bad if you hadn`t the common sense to provide for yourself.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: Gurney
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 02:11 AM

Ard mhacha, I think, but I'm not sure, that the book that I mentioned earlier, had no 'Railway' in the title. I seem to remember being surprised that it wasn't about sailors! I was expecting it to be about Magellan and Drake and Cook and such heroes.
A good and interesting read anyway.

Maybe I should do a search.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: hobo
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 10:00 AM

This is a very thorny subject - for the Irish in British construction (or perhaps anywhere?) was addiction to 'the dhrink' down to individual weakness, was it built into the hiring system, was it pre-emigration conditioning, or was/is it a flaw in the Irish national character? Or a composite of all these things...

Would it be straining this forum to offer a few quotes from a paper I gave at the Meriman Summer School a few years ago called 'Connaughtmen And Horned Cattle To The Far Platform: Irish Navvies & The Culture of Migration'?

Don't know who moderates this discussion but I'll understand if this is too much. Here goes ...

Navvy quotes re. drink

'In their youth, having escaped the petty tyrannies of priests, parents, and community back home in rural Ireland, they revelled in an unaccustomed freedom but failed to replace the supportive framework of family and community with something similar in Britain. At the same time, having been educated to regard the British as 'the old enemy', they evinced no sense of civic responsibility towards the host society. Often theirs was virtually an 'outlaw' mentality ('They taught us to hate England – and then they sent us over here!').

The seeming camaraderie of the building site was tenuous and temporary although peer pressures, for example to prove ones self a hard drinker or fighter, could become a new tyranny for anyone not naturally so inclined. Efforts to advance, for example by becoming a gangerman or subbie, carried connotations of assumed superiority which in turn provoked resentment and rejection

"When I looked at my husband, and looked at all the rest, and at my children's       friends, I thought it was me, then I thought it was England, and eventually it dawned on me that it was Ireland, had done all this to them…I realised that the harm was done before they ever left. England added to it, but it wasn't the cause of it…

When my children were younger, I had to explain why their father was like that; that he was from another country. If you're Irish, you've got to admit that that is Ireland, and that's the way it brings up its young…Yet they were expected to go out into the world and behave normally - but they can't; they don't trust anyone.

And the fellas were living a lie too; they weren't supposed to be men, out drinking and dancing and chatting up girls, or whatever…They just don't know how to face anything, because they were never told about anything, and they were never allowed to ask for anything; because if you asked, you were a failure.

The men won't face reality; if they can't get the material things, have it there on show, they live in dreams - all in the mind…And the more stable ones eventually crack up; its not that they crack up, they come to their senses, wake up to reality. They've been living under this stress for so long, and it suddenly dawns on them that they were tricked that it was all a lie…

And while they were told that England was a place where you could be yourself, they found out that, if you're Irish and need the support of your own kind to survive, as the "Westies" who work in construction always do, then you can't be yourself - they won't let you. You want to make a stand, and speak out against it, and they won't let you speak out; so you become an outsider…

`Whatever way they were brought up, there's a lot of bitterness, and spite, and jealousy in them…So much so that it can eat away at them, and it can destroy them, and any relationships they might have… They end up old, and bitter, and alone; they've worked so hard for something better, but they never get that thing that's better, because of their own selves…'
Where were these men coming from? The views of an anonymous Irish subbie, a very wealthy man, were recorded in Jackson's 1964 work, The Irish in Britain:
"And then coming to England with the lads and sticking together, being afraid to talk to the English girls, and all the time this brooding thing of history…well, it didn't help you know in so-called integrating'.   
`Mind you, we were all very sensitive and unsure then…we might have a meal, but never in a place that looked "proper", with table cloths and so on. We'd be scared to go into a place like that, even on Sundays with our best suits on, in case they'd throw us out for not knowing how to behave properly at table…Sometimes now I go for a stroll around Camden Town, after Mass on a Sunday, and the lads are still there…atin' away without a word between them, stuffin' mixed grills down their gollops…and I'm glad them days are behind me".

Joe McGarry, an ex-navvy and reformed alcoholic, had this take on it:
"An awful lot of Irishmen - some of the finest of men, 18, 25, 27 years of age, really handsome men, afraid to talk to a woman or an English person, riddled with fear…I've seen them go into a caff and, if there was a young woman of their own age behind the counter, they could not talk to her. They had to knock each other out to prove they weren't afraid. And it was Ireland that did that to them'

'The people who did have a sense of self, who were true individuals, became the millionaires, while I was standin' down a hole, to get money, to buy drink, so that I could fit in, belong, be 'normal', be 'one of us'. If you didn't maintain this togetherness you weren't part of 'our little group'; you were 'one of them', whoever 'they' were. If you didn't drink your money at night, you were seen as mean - there was somethin' wrong with you…Now I know I'm an island of self, between two places, and I have to identify my own self - what I am, what I can do'.

John Docherty, a Donegal-born director of Tarmac Construction, also had strong views concerning the Irish class system:
"When I first came over my mother was ashamed to let it be known that I was in London, because it might be thought that I had been in trouble with the law back home. In those days it was commonplace for a first offender, if male, to be given a choice by the courts of either going to gaol or going to England'

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: ard mhacha
Date: 08 Aug 08 - 05:17 AM

Believe me Paddywack there were lots of Irish atheists who were of the same opinion.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: GUEST,Paddywack
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 07:14 PM

Maybe we were dependent on drink as Ard Maca points out, but dependency is a disease and in typical fashion "to be avoided" was the typical Irish Catholic attude.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: GUEST,mayomick
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 12:14 PM

the last post was from me btw.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 12:13 PM

True , but also from afficianados of MacAlpine's Fusileers. I don't want to go into the "what is a folk song" argument here , but Fusileers does seem to me to be a genuine example of a song taken up by and sung by the people it was written about. According to my father , the men working on the tunnels "would sing bits and pieces of it while they worked". He was adamant btw that Dominic Behan didn't and couldn't have been the composer.
It mightn't come across in the song so much ,but the Irish actually had something of an ambiguous attitude towards MacAlpines . Along with natural class antipathies went a measure of respect , because at one time MacAlpine's was the only big contractor in England that would employ the Irish..They employed large numbers buildng the huge exhibition centre at Earl's Court in the thirties . I was wondering whether the Irish population in close-by Hammersmith would have originally come from that job or if their connection there went back further..
Ultan , I'm living in Dublin now , but otherwise I'd have been pleased to meet up with you in Hammersmith . As far as your book is concerned , I thought you circled the square very successfully indeed – the Gobban Saor himself couldn't have done any better.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: hobo
Date: 07 Aug 08 - 08:32 AM

Sorry Folks - when I listed 'Navvyman' and referred to the author's Irish-sound surname, I didn't spot the fact that I hadn't in fact given the author's name - Dick Sullivan,in the first place... Alzheimer's can't be far off!

Apologies...

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: hobo
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 06:35 PM

Ironically the first navvies, technically speaking, were the 'Excavators' who worked on the Newry Canal (completed 1745), and so were in fact Irish.'Navvy' was the abbreviated form of navigator, the term applied to the excavators of the commercial canal network known as the Inland Navigation System, the Newry Canal being the first example.

I say ironically because, although the modern British public assume that all navvies were Irish, exhaustive research carried out in the early '80s by Dr. David Brooke of Bath proved that approximately 90% of the 19th century railway navvies employed in the United Kingdom were in fact British - predominantly from the North of England (in the US it was a different matter and Brooke does state that the only 'the ubiquitous Irish' were a truly international force in railway construction). His very scholarly book, based on a doctoral thesis, is The Railway Navvy: That Despicable Race of Men (London, 1983).

Other non-fiction works on the navvy:
Terry Coleman's The Railway Navvies (London, 1965). A very good read with a wealth of anecdote.

James Handley (Brother Clare) wrote The Navvy in Scotland (Cork University Press, 1947) also based on Ph.D. research, and it remains the definitive work on that specific aspect of the subject.

Navvyman (London, 1983), another history of the railway navvies, is in similar vein to Coleman's but its author, the surname notwithstanding, is not only English but the son of a navvy father and a mother born on site to a railway navvy. This excellent book is marred only by the author's marked prejudice against the Irish in the industry, echoing that of a great many railway navvies of Scottish origin.

To the best of my knowledge the subject of the Irish in British construction overall was not seriously addressed in print until the publication of my own book, The Men who built Britain: A History of the Irish Navvy, in 2001. My objective was to put the Irish navvy in the twin contexts of Irish emigration and British civil engineering history, while at the same time giving an authentic voice to the men concerned (and their women) as individuals. This was a difficult circle to square and the extent to which I was successful is a matter of opinion!

Donal MacAuligh, John B. Keane, Timothy O'Grady,the author of 'Kings of the Kilburn High Road (?), and Peter Woods have all written fictional treatments of the subject - in every case, I believe, based on some degree of fist-hand experience. Interest in the subject, it seems to me, is now largely confined to a small proportion of the Irish abroad and a shrinking number of returned emigrants and their families in Ireland.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 04:42 AM

I know there was an excellent Jim Allen (Manchester building worker - scriptwriter) film back in the 60s entitled 'The Lump' and also an extremely depressing film by Ken Loach about itinerant workers (name escapes me) - does anybody have any information about either of these or know if they are available at all.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: ard mhacha
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 04:30 AM

Pricely?, Princely.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: ard mhacha
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 04:29 AM

The Railway navvies can be bought for the pricely sum of 75p at ABEbooks also on e-bay.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: ard mhacha
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 04:20 AM

Gurney, A book by Terry Coleman, `The Railway Navvies` published in 1965, later a Penguin paperback, tells the story of the men who built the Railways in Britain. This excellent book would be well worth a request in your local library.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: Gurney
Date: 06 Aug 08 - 12:38 AM

From memory of a book read long ago, called, I think, The Navigators.

The term navvie is an abbreviation of navigator, from the labour force that dug the earlier form of mass transportation, the canals or 'navigations.'

Hard men, mighty workers, hearty eaters, and unpopular with the locals around where they were working, because of accusations of theft. The first navvies were English, although the term has now become almost exclusively linked with Irish.
When building the railways in India, English firms are supposed to have found it cheaper to import experienced navvies from Britain, the local labour being ineffective for such brutal work. The book said it was thought to be due to the local diet.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: ard mhacha
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 04:45 PM

The term `long distant kiddies` was the term I often heard to describe the `Pinchers`.
I wouldn`t agree with Paddywack regarding the non-help from the Irish government, the position that some of the Irish labouring man found himself in was entirely of his own making. I was with labourers from all over Ireland and the majority of them were steady workers who didn`t depend on anyone for help, those that were constantly on `the scrounge`were too reliant on the drink,they were to be avoided.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: Rowan
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 08:34 PM

Sorry for the late entry and apparent thread drift but it's a fascinating read. The following snippets from 22 July triggered my response.

A neighbour and friend in London, the late Paddy Boyle, from Ardaragh in Donegal used to give wonderful accounts of his time as a navvy; it was he who gave me the explanation of the term 'hot-bed'.
He said that some of the landladies would rent out the bed rather than the room, and while one man was working his shift another would be sleeping in the bed - which never got cold.
Don't know if this is true or folklore.
Jim Carroll

Hadn't heard the term 'hot bed' before, and while many men on shift work took turns with the bed - and no doubt kept it warm, I doubt that the landladies had the brass neck to just rent the mattress - but you never know! Donal MacAuligh has a lovely story about being put into a bed with a Corkman when he was stuck one night, & the two of them saying the rosary together; innocent days...
Re. my new project, any similar titbits most welcome...
Ultan

Melbourne is a long way from the action in the thread but hotbedding has appeared twice in my life. During the 1940s Fitzroy (an inner northern suburb of Melbourne) was regarded as having the highest population density in Oz. While the terraced houses along the main streets were still fashionable the ones in the back streets were run down and regarded as slums. Many were boarding houses where the rooms had several beds in them and the beds were rented by the shift. It was an area where it was necessary to be streetwise, even into the 60s, when the area started to be gentrified.

That was my first exposure to the term hotbedding.

The second was much more recent. As a volunteer firefighter in the NSW Rural Fire Service I was part of the first team my brigade contributed to the task force in the (rather large) Pilliga fires in 1997. We were billeted in a motel and, after the first three days, we were joined by another team from our brigade. Accommodation for 350 firefighters in the area was in short supply so we were all billeted in the same beds; while one team was doing their 12 hours the other team was having a kip and the roles changed every 12 hours. This was known as hotbedding and, at the time, was not uncommon in such circumstances.

Not central to the experiences of Irish workers but you may be interested to know that the practice and the term has had such recent currency so far away.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: GUEST,Paddywack
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 05:43 PM

Hobos description of the spike is far nearer the mark from my own experience.

Having spent a number of years tramping around the British Isles,our way of life was very rough and ready. We worked when we needed money for drink and drank a very lethal dose of cider and surgical spirit which we called "Jacks" and have often been questioned as to why we needed surgical spirit.

The spike was used in our way of life as a means of getting cleaned up and an address to get the NAB and we were ready to go on the road again.

In those days we didnt have Irish Welfare Agiences to look after us and were treated as an embaressament who were best ignored.

Reading this ,before I post it, makes me sound very bitter and yes I am, the Irish Government has never done anything for the real Irish down and outs.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: hobo
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 05:08 PM

The Spike (never heard it referred to in the plural) in the first half of the 20th century was the successor of the 19th century Workhouse and was run, in the main, by the local authority. It was regarded by men on tramp as a place of last resort, usually frequented by tramps (in the professional sense, as opposed to 'Tramp Navvy').

The 'Kip House', on the other hand, seems to have been the Model Lodging House - as described by Patrick MacGill. This was a commercial venture providing for transient labouring men and was the precursor of the Rowton Houses which however were established by the Victorian philanthropist Lord Rowton.

I have a very graphic and almost frightening description of a night in The Spike which is part of a memoir given to me by a man, now in his seventies, who became infatuated with the way of life of the Pincher Kiddies whom he met in his youth labouring in England. This man claims that, while those in the Kip Houses were to some extent apart from society, those who habitually stayed in the Spikes were utterly and irredeemably alienated totally from it -as indeed were many of the true Pinchers or Long Distance Kiddies such as MacAuligh met in the early 'Fifties.

As a youth I once stayed in a German 'Ubernachtstellung' in Karlsruhe which was probably their equivaqlent of a Spike and was scared out of my wits by the wild men I met there. On another occasion I stayed in one somewhere near Whitechapel in London's East End. These were places where it was advisable,once you removed your shoes or boots for bed, to put one under each of the legs below the bed head so that anyone trying to steal them would have to risk waking you up in the process!

As bad as most of these facilities were, after their demise the habitual tramping fraternity were left in a bad way because their usually weak bladders and fondness for drink made them personae non grata with landladies renting 'rooms' - the only remaining alternative. A number of the old timers died of hypothermia sleeping out under the railway arches in the big freeze up of 1963.

Ultan

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: MartinRyan
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 04:58 PM

The 1811 "Dictionary of the Vulgar tongue" has no sign of "spike", which is consistent with Partridge's estimate of date.

Regards

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: MartinRyan
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 03:20 PM

Partridge's Dictionary of Historical Slang gives it as mid 19 Century tramps cant. To go "on the spike" is to sleep in the workhouse.

Regards

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: MartinRyan
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 03:16 PM

Several online dictionaries give "spike" as (U.K.) slang for a hostel for the homeless. Nothing on origin as yet - nor much real sense of date.

Regards

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: MartinRyan
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 02:12 PM

mayomack

That's what bothers me, really! That "aye" (diphthong "ei") sound doesn't really occur in Irish, in my experience (some of our local pedants will no doubt come up with examples, nonetheless!).

My immediate reaction when I heard the word was an image of the sort of spike on which shopkeepers used to stick receipts. Given the time-frame suggested above, this might not be a crazy idea - some sort of "chit" system? I'll see if I can find out anything more.

Regards

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: mayomick
Date: 02 Aug 08 - 08:40 AM

The Spikes seem to have been set up around the begining of the 20th century by some official body - the Ministry of Works perhaps?- to facilitate navvies who would be on the tramp looking for work .The original idea behind them was that they would be within a day's tramp of each other . This is according to my father who came from very near Kiltimagh and started work in England in 1929 . He thought that the word may have been Irish - he never met anyone other than Irish people in them he said.

They may have cleaned up their act before Paddywhack arrived ,but in the thirties Spikes were apparantly places to avoid - unlike the Rowton Houses which served a similar function but were considered cleaner.

I think Paddywhack was right in his use of the word "shackle" in the singular when referring to the stew . The word "spikes" on the other hand was always -at least in my recollection - used with an 's' on the end as if it was plural. Martin , how do you think the word would be spelt if it was Irish ?

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: GUEST,Paddywack
Date: 02 Aug 08 - 07:58 AM

Spikes were hostels of sorts where you went and got 3 days (not sure of exact no) free board and lodgings in order to clean up and get sorted out. These were used mostly by people who had been skippering for a long time and were in need of a clean up. There was strictly no drinking on these premises. There was a really good one in Wales cant remember where exactly,brains a bit pickled at my age.

I would guess that these were forerunners of The Salvation Army Hostels.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: ard mhacha
Date: 02 Aug 08 - 07:23 AM

During my working years in England from the late 1950s to the late 1960s I met a few of those old timers some who had been away from Ireland 50 or more years.
The real `pinchers` were mostly from the west of Ireland, they were clannish and moved in packs from job to job.
The Labour Weekly was their paper for finding the best paying jobs, hard work was secondary as long as the wages were good that is all that mattered.
The `Culchies` mostly `Pinchers` and referred to as ¬Long distant boys`[derived from Kiltimagh in County Mayo] were looked down upon by lots of other Irish men the Dublin men picked many a row with them.
The `Spike` was, from memory a lodging house in London, Donall MacAmhlaigh`s book An Irish Navvy republished in 2003 by Collins is a must read for anyone interested in this subject, also Patrick McGill`s Children of the dead end.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: MartinRyan
Date: 01 Aug 08 - 09:57 AM

BTW. : I notice "shackle pot" or "shackle-pot" being used in the sense of a stewpot in some tinker/traveller related postings on the net - as well as in one or two documents I can make no sense of! Can anyone check dictionaries of tinker cant and related languages?

Regards

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: MartinRyan
Date: 01 Aug 08 - 09:41 AM

Sorry, mayomick - the meaning isn't clear to me from the earlier mention. Tell us more, please?

Regards

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: GUEST,mayomick
Date: 01 Aug 08 - 08:44 AM

Does anyone have any ideas on the origin of the word "spikes" ? My father thought it might have been an Irish word .

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: GUEST,Paddywack
Date: 30 Jul 08 - 03:17 PM

I remember the communal cooker very well and am gratefull for the various definitions of shackle and shackling up.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: GUEST,mayomick
Date: 30 Jul 08 - 08:00 AM

I would have thought that the verb "to shackle " was taken from the practice of tying a prisoner up by the shackles . Thereafter manacles came to be known as shackles .

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Jul 08 - 03:30 PM

Hi Martin,
Orwell suggests in 'Down and Out In Paris And London' that the term was "probably coined in some prison where soup was so cathartic as to keep prisoners 'shackled' to - or near - a latrine".
Partridge dismisses it as "a nice theory...." and gives his own definition of the word.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: MartinRyan
Date: 27 Jul 08 - 03:12 PM

Which is Low German, seemingly.

Regards

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: MartinRyan
Date: 27 Jul 08 - 03:10 PM

In fact, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary makes the same connections, so to speak. Ultimately, I suspect the nautical root is the key link.

Regards

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: MartinRyan
Date: 27 Jul 08 - 03:00 PM

Jim (Carroll)

Ha! I had started one step further back in time! I see it now in the "Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang" with a reference to 1935-6. It suggests a connection to "shackles" and in turn to "shackle-bone" meaning "knuckle-bone" - as does the Partridge reference you cite.

Regards

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: GUEST,ythanside
Date: 27 Jul 08 - 02:34 PM

Sorry, that was my post re the Radio Ballads.

Ythanside

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: GUEST
Date: 27 Jul 08 - 02:31 PM

All of the Radio Ballads have been re-issued by, and are available on CD, from

Topic Records Ltd,
50 Stroud Green Road,
London,
N4 3ES.

I heard about the re-issue earlier this week and got two of them for around £9.00 each.

Enjoy

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 27 Jul 08 - 02:04 PM

From Partridge's 'Dictionary of the Underworld'.
Shackling-up
A great cooking of food in a pot ('Sneak Thief on the Road' 1934)
Shackle up
To cook one's stew, esp in a 'jungle' ca. 1920
Shackle
"Soup (British and American tramps' slang) WH Davies and George Orwell
Short for shackle-(or knuckle) - bones. Shackles has, in Britain, been long a proletarian word for remnants and scrapings of meat in a butchers shop".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: MartinRyan
Date: 27 Jul 08 - 01:24 PM

A quick look through some slang dictionaries doesn't come up with anything promising on "shackle pot" or "shackling up". Off the top of my head, all that comes to mind is using a length of chain with a shackle to suspend a pot over an open fire.

Regards

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: hobo
Date: 27 Jul 08 - 01:01 PM

'Shackling up' was the term used amongst Irish building workers, apparently well in to the 1970's, for communal cooking - whether on site or in the bed-sits where the only available stove/cooker was on the landing outside the rooms.

Again, to my shame, I never thought to ask for the derivation - probably because I work by establishing a rapport and don't like to break the flow by asking awkward or pedantic peripheral questions. There is of course a happy medium...

I suspect that the term may originate with the construction of a system for suspending a cooking pot over an open (camp) fire...Shows how far removed we have all become, in a relatively short space of time, from certain ways of living whose elements stretch unbroken back to the Middle Ages. How un-free today's semingly well-padded youth are even compared with those of us who were young in the nineteen sixties!

Ultan

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: GUEST,mayomick
Date: 27 Jul 08 - 11:43 AM

Sadly I can't remember how the pincher knot was tied Ultan. My father read your book and enjoyed it very much ,it's a pity you never met up with him - he must have been one of the last of the old timers.
He told me that the idea behind the spikes was that they would be within a day's tramp of each other. It didn't always work out that way of course so the shackle pot would have been indispensable . Dad always called stew 'the shackles', the main ingredients was bones if I remember rightly.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: GUEST,Paddwack
Date: 27 Jul 08 - 08:39 AM

This is bringing back some memories. When we on the road one of the most important pieces of gear was a large saucepan into which went meatand veg which would last for a week This was called a shackle pot does anybody know where this comes from and Im positive it has nothing to do with sheckles.

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: Zen
Date: 26 Jul 08 - 02:10 PM

Excellent thread and a refreshing change from some of the other dross that abounds. I'm following closely as two of my uncles (both sadly now passed away) from around the West Sligo/East Mayo border were both "Tunnel Tigers" as referred to ealier in the thread. Unfortunately I can't recall their stories well enough to contribute.

Zen

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Jul 08 - 02:28 AM

"are you sure there's not a song in there?"
Barry,
Not to everybody's taste - if you get my drift.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: Barry Finn
Date: 26 Jul 08 - 01:31 AM

Jim, very funny story about the trench & the sandwich, are you sure there's not a song in there?

Thanks for the lovely laugh
Barry

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: hobo
Date: 25 Jul 08 - 04:32 PM

Hi Jim

      No - didn't know about those recordings. The Radio Ballads were ground-breaking in their day and could do with a fresh airing...If anyone today gives a damn.

But your post confirms my suspicion that you must be the 'Jim Carroll' whose name I found jotted down in the notes I consulted to track down the Martin Henry info. recently for this forum...

Maybe you'd be so kind as to contact me privately to discuss thesde matters - [e-mail]

Many thanks

Ultan

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Jul 08 - 03:27 PM

PS,
Ultan,
I'm sure you are aware, but just in case.....
I know there are unused recordings made at the time of the making of the Radio Ballad, 'Song of a Road'.
These are housed in the Charles Parker archive in Birmingham Central library and are accessible to the public.
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 25 Jul 08 - 03:19 PM

Ultan,
It was quite often difficult to sort out the truth from the humour with many of the people we met over the years, mainly in London.
My father told of when he was working for a firm called McAdams in Stevenage, the toilets were a long trench with a plank resting on two upturned oildrums, inside a corrugated hut. The trench was regularly treated with disinfectant until eventually it was filled in and re-sited on another part of the site.
One day (he claims) he walked into the hut to find one of his workmates wading in the bottom of the trench with his arm buried deep in the morass. He asked your man what he was doing and was told that the man's jacked had fallen off the plank and had sunk, and that he was trying to find it.
My dad said, "surely you can't wear the jacket after its been down there".
"No" replied your man, "but my sandwiches are in the pocket".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: MartinRyan
Date: 24 Jul 08 - 07:59 PM

Dan

No!

Regards

Subject: RE: Define: Pincher laddies
From: olddude
Date: 24 Jul 08 - 07:47 PM

silly question but I don't know the answer, is this the same as a tinker? I visited Ireland several time and heard the term used for traveling people ... is this the same?

Dan