The BLANEY BROTHERS in the THIRTIES

While the Great Depression began with the Stock Market crash in the United States October 1929 it quickly spread throughout the world.

In the United Kingdom, it was referred to as the Great Slump. Since the UK had not fully recovered from WWI, it seemed less severe than that experienced in North America, which had seen boom times during the 1920s. Hardest hit was the industrial northern area of the UK. World trade declined and the demand for product exports decreased significantly. Mining and ship building industries suffered and mass unemployment caused severe poverty.

The area around London and the Midlands were less affected. While unemployment was initially high, by the mid to late 1930s the area was quite prosperous. Home building around London was helped along by a growing population in the area and low interest rates. Birmingham was prospering because of their booming automotive industry and the number of cars on the road doubled in the decade.

When Bess' parents, Harry & Jane Blaney returned to Birmingham with their children, Louise and Alfie in October 1930. they were taken in by their son Edwin (Ted) Harold Blaney at 12 Heathfield Road, in the King's Heath area.

Ted was born in Birmingham 17 August 1900. He served in the Royal Navy for two years from 15 June 1921, until 14 June 1923 and married Florence Sophia Whitehouse that year.

By 1930 they had two daughters, Florence (b. 1924) and Margaret (b. 1928) so an additional family of four made it a little crowded. Ted was a leather worker and likely had work during this time. It also came in handy fixing the family's shoes.

Their son John was born in March of 1932 and the 1939 Register shows Ted employed as a boiler attendant and Florence working part time as a shop assistant.

                                                                        ********

Bess' youngest brothers Albert (b. 4 September 1904) and Stanley (b. 16 January 1906) were both living in British Columbia, Canada. 

Albert Blaney lived an interesting life. He came alone to Canada at the age of 17 in 1922 landing in Halifax, travelling by rail to Montreal, then on to British Columbia. He had a job offer from the logging railroad that his uncle Michael Murphy (husband of his mother’s sister, Clara Elcocks) worked for in Rock Bay, B.C. It turned out that working “in the bush” as he called it was filled with much hard work and danger, but he loved it.

From 1925-1927 he and his brother Stanley served in the Militia with the 42^nd Black Watch Highlanders in Montreal. They also worked in Montreal General Hospital along with their sister Bess before returning to British Columbia.

By 1929 Albert had a floor laying business and he met Helen (Nellie) Atkinson in the Vancouver boarding house where they both lived. She was also new to Canada, arriving in June 1920, age 24, travelling alone to her brother in Winnipeg. She worked there for a short time and then moved on to Vancouver where the weather was not so severe.

They became close as he taught her about photography including developing film. They were married January 12, 1929 and stayed happily together until her death at age 90.

Albert owned some property in Capilano area of North Vancouver gifted to him by his Aunt Clara and Uncle Michael Murphy for his 21^st birthday so they were able to live reasonably well during the Depression. The land provided plenty of food and there were lots of salmon in the Capilano River. Albert said “it looked as if you could walk across the water on the salmon. One salmon could last us a week”.

He had numerous ways of creating work for himself and others as well as sharing his land.  He cleared land, built houses and sold honey from his ten bee hives.

From 1934 until 1938 Albert belonged to the Legion of Frontiersmen a version of Special Constables that was for a time affiliated with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

                         
                                 *********
               

In 1930 Stanley Blaney, was living in North Vancouver with Margaret Kelly Thompson born 1902 in Belfast Ireland. Albert had sent passage for Stan to emigrate to Canada in June of 1923 and the brothers worked and lived close to each other for many years. 

Margaret left a troubled life in turbulent Northern Ireland in 1920. She travelled across Canada alone to stay with an uncle in Vancouver where life was not much happier.

A few years later, Margaret was working as a waitress when Stan rescued her from an abusive relationship. He was just 5ft 8in in height but he was tough, strong and hardworking. Since he had no money, car or house, their first home was a converted chicken coop at the back of Albert’s property. Like many other couples in those times they could not afford to marry.

In 1933 they heard there were jobs in Toronto and set off on their greatest adventure. Stories written by their daughter Patricia (Blaney) Koretchuk tell us “Margaret disguised herself in men’s clothes and together they hiked and hopped freight trains 3000 miles across Canada”. She cut her hair very short, wore a vest and long pants, heavy work boots and a peaked hat down over her eyebrows.” Many men travelled this way at the time but it was unusual for a woman to do so. It was a difficult and dangerous journey with many hardships along the way including hunger and evading the railway police.

In Toronto, they lived with Bess and Harry and their three young children for a short time but when it became clear that Margaret was pregnant and unmarried, Bess asked them to leave. She could not afford to compromise her reputation in the church.

Things were actually worse in the city where they experienced hunger as well as unemployment. Stan worked at every odd job that came along, they took in boarders and over time he found steady employment as a leather worker.

Their daughter Patricia was born in Toronto April 23, 1934, they were married and the family stayed there for the next eleven years. They mended their relationship with Bess but their love for the west prevailed and they returned to British Columbia on V.J. Day in 1945.

Thanks to Patricia (Blaney) Koretchuk for sharing her memories of Albert & Stan.


                                                                       ********

Bess's "big brother" was William ( Bill) Blaney born January 9, 1896 in Birmingham. Bill joined the Royal Navy at the age of 15 1/2 entering as a Boy II on a training ship in 1911 and didn't return to Birmingham to live.

In 1919 Bill married Rosetta (Rose) Amy (Wallis) Huxley whose first husband Henry John Huxley had died in France during WWI. Bill remained in the navy until the end of WWII and they lived many years in Feltham in Middlesex, about 150 miles from Birmingham.

In 1920 Bill received a medal for his part in the rescue of a fellow seaman who could not swim. 

In September 1931 near the beginning of the Depression The Invergordon Mutiny occurred. It was a strike by thousands of sailors from about a dozen Royal Navy Warships docked in Cromarty Firth Northern Scotland while participating in a naval exercise.

Rumours were swirling that wage cuts of up to 25% were coming in order to reduce government spending. News of the strike spread upsetting the stock market and undermining the British Pound. It was settled by allowing those on lower rates of pay to remain on the old rate, effectively cancelling the 25% pay cut in favour of a universal 10% cut.

Depending on where they were living and their occupations, the Blaneys suffered to different degrees during this difficult time. Their courage and tenacity served them well.

Next: Growing Up in Toronto

 

BOOM to BUST - They Called Them the Dirty Thirties

The silver age of the twenties was almost over when Harry, Bess and their three children moved from Brantford to the big city. Toronto had been booming for almost a decade, even the tourists were coming.

Known as a city of churches it was also a financial, manufacturing and retailing centre. There was a building boom with fourteen skyscrapers built between 1922 and 1928 and in June 1929 the sixteen million dollar Royal York Hotel was opened.

Traffic on Bay Street

Industry was growing, inflation and wages were up, the good times had returned. There were jobs in the banks and insurance companies. Women were now accepted as part of the workforce and 25% of them had work. Many people had a job and a car, so road congestion became a problem in the bustling city and Driver Licenses were necessary.

41 Delaney Cr. Parkdale

The 1920s were also a time of “buy now, pay later” for cars, appliances and homes which caused over expansion and over production subsequently resulting in layoffs. Construction was slowing down too.

When he was not ailing, Harry was employed as a brass worker, Lewis age 13 and Joan age 12 attended local public schools. After school Joan prepared dinner and helped care for her four year old sister Eileen while Bess worked a split shift cleaning early morning and late afternoon at one of the large downtown banks. They were renting a small house in the working class Parkdale area of Toronto.

The bubble burst when the Wall Street Stock Market crashed in October 1929. It was the beginning of the dirty thirties. It was the Depression and it was hard times for most.

The Prairies suffered from extreme cold and blizzards, followed by drought and grasshopper plagues resulting in dust storms and crop failure. 100,000 people left to look for work in the cities.Unskilled single men suffered the most hardship during this time.

In Toronto Since 1918: An Illustrated History, James Lemon provides some gruelling statistics. In 1931, 17% of Toronto’s population was out of work and two years later, 30% were unemployed. There was no unemployment insurance, no family allowance and no medicare.

Those working, saw wages drop by 60%, and no overtime.  The federal government set up work camps for single men doing construction work in the bush. Municipal jobs building sewers, water mains and roads by hand, known as “moving dirt”, were created.  Many men criss-crossed the country by hopping on trains and sleeping outdoors while searching for work. Hobos lived in the Don Valley in Toronto.

Scott Mission - soup kitchen

More than 100,000 people were "on the dole". Public relief agencies provided some vouchers for food and rent (no cash), and soup kitchens provided help. Evictions were common and people moved frequently as there was only help for the first month's rent. To qualify, applicants must have no relatives to help them, be supporting a family, use no liquor, and have no telephone or car.

People coped as best they could. They helped each other, remade clothing, repaired what they had, fed vagrants, took in boarders or shared houses with family members. Large houses were broken up into rental units as 60% were tenants. Young people remained at home longer and the number of marriages fell along with the birthrate. Some lived well as goods were cheap; the value of some products falling by up to 50%.

At one point Harry suffered a heart attack and could not work, causing Bess to sell her engagement ring to raise funds.

However for a number of years Harry was well and he was a skilled and experienced brass worker. He made fittings for Standard Bronze Company, a large manufacturer of lighting fixtures and Bess was working as a cleaner. Some of Harry's brass and copper works remain in the family.

The family were thrifty, for example Harry mended their shoes - they were making ends meet.

Generations who lived through those times carried the lessons throughout their life. Bess and Joan practiced “waste not want not” and "try to keep a little money for a rainy day”. They took care of their belongings, repairing them rather than replacing them and they used electricity and heat judiciously for the rest of their lives.

****************

Shortly after Bess and Harry moved to Toronto, Bess’s family joined them, coming from Birmingham England. Bess's mother Martha Jane (Elcocks) Blaney was age 52, her father Harry Blaney age 53, her sister Louise age 14 and brother Alfred (Alfie) was age 9. They boarded the S.S. Athena on November 2, 1929 and arrived in Quebec nine days later.

Harry Blaney

Harry Blaney was a leather worker and the passenger list notes that the family’s destination was their daughter’s home in Toronto.

Martha Jane Blaney

It also shows that their fares were paid by the British Salvation Army. The charity made passage available to many poor residents of England to give them a fresh start in the colonies.

Taking the train from Quebec to Toronto, they were met at Union Station by Bess and Harry.

Bess’ sister Louise was just a year older than her son Lewis. They were all living together so Louise, Lewis and Joan quickly became good friends and they enjoyed their time together.

Lewis, Louise, Joan & Eileen

Lewis Joan & Louise

It was the Golden Age of Hollywood and you could forget your troubles with a 25 cent ticket to the movies. Radio was entertaining and widely available. There were sporting events, roller skating and swimming.

The family loved the beach, often taking the ferry to Hanlon’s Point on Toronto Island or the streetcar to the eastern beaches, with family and friends.  

Life was not so easy for the parents. Bess and her mother had never been close and everyone living in the same house was likely challenging for all of them. 

Unfortunately within a year of their arrival the Blaneys were forced to return to England.

Family lore has it that Jane, while working in a ladies wear shop, had taken something that did not belong to her. Regardless, the passenger list of the Andania shows Harry, Jane, Louise & Alfie listed under the category Deported. Their destination was shown as 12 Heathfield Road, Birmingham, the home of their son Ted Blaney and they arrived in Liverpool, England on October 19, 1930.

Bess was appalled and embarrassed to say the least and it was not spoken about even within the family. However Joan did tell me the story late in her life. Other than the passenger list, I have not yet been able to find an official record of the event.

As written in Whence They Came, Deportation from Canada 1900-1935 by Barbara Roberts, in Canada during the depression, any “new” immigrants (less than 5 years in Canada) not working or being supported by someone else, as well as troublemakers, were deported, often without trials. Between 1930 and 1935, thirty thousand people were deported from Canada. An article on the Libraries and Archives Canada website mentions that never before or since have deportations reached the same magnitude as in those years. Some Canadians, desperate themselves, blamed foreigners for taking away their jobs and using relief agency funds.

Harry and Jane returned to Birmingham penniless and moved in with their son Ted and his family where they stayed for a number of years.   Recently a daughter of Ted’s told me that things did not go very well there either due to many conflicts over her Grandmother Jane’s behaviour. 

GUEST WRITER

I have been absent from my blog for the past six months due to a broken wrist and the resulting surgery and physiotherapy but just before my accident I began collaborating with my first cousin once removed Patricia Blaney Koretchuk on a family story.

Pat is the daughter of my grandmother Elizabeth Blaney's brother, Stanley Blaney. We have kept in touch sporadically during our lives although we have lived 3000 miles apart for the past sixty years. We have seen each other a few times in the past ten years and in the past couple of years we have particularly shared our love of family stories and their relevance to our understanding of our family.

Pat is a former teacher and vice-principal, now retired and an experienced writer of biographies. She has written and published a biography (Chasing the Comet:A Scottish-Canadian Life), published some of her poetry and written many family stories including those of her mother, a favourite uncle and others.

She has done a large number of interviews with family members over the years and I have done a good amount of family history research, so with the help of email and long distance telephone conversations, we decided to collaborate on the story of Harry Blaney. He was my great-grandfather and Pat’s grandfather.

Pat has a collection of Canadian family interviews, bed-time stories from her parents and conversations with relatives in England during her visits there to draw from. I have research documents relating to his life such as birth, marriage and death registrations as well as census records. I also have my grandmother’s personal papers and family photographs. In my next post, I will introduce Pat as a guest writer by publishing Harry Blaney’s story. 

Pat gives us a story that provides an interesting and balanced look at Harry’s character, personality and lifestyle. I have been able to confirm most of the information from my research documents as well as my grandmother’s journals and poems regarding her relationship with her beloved father. 

The documents show that there is a conflict in his age at the time he married. In the marriage registration document, his age and that of his bride, Jane Elcocks is stated as several years older than their age shown in all the other available documentation including four census reports as well as his birth and death registration. Perhaps they had a reason for overstating their age at the time.

Pat has included many anecdotes and I have added a couple of my grandmother’s photos to illustrate the story.

We are currently finalizing our document and I hope to post it soon. We are enjoying working together on this project and we hope Harry’s descendants will enjoy the story and gain some additional insights in to our family history. Perhaps someone will come forward with additional information about him or another point of view. If so we will welcome their input.

ELIZABETH'S MOTHER AND FATHER

Harry Blaney

Martha Jane Elcocks

 Elizabeth (Bess) Blaney’s parents, Harry Blaney and Martha Jane Elcocks were married July 9, 1895 in Birmingham, England; he was nineteen and she was eighteen. With the exception of a year in Canada (1929-1930), they lived out their lives in Birmingham. Harry lived to the age of seventy-nine and Jane until age eighty-four. Life was difficult due to little income, the quick start of their family and it remained so throughout.  Also, public records indicate that Jane was pregnant at the time of the wedding which would have been scandalous in these Victorian times.

Harry was a hardworking father, at times a house painter, a granite layer and a leatherworker. He was a strong, healthy and very active man, always providing for his family.

  

While she was very close to her father, Bess’s relationship with her mother was not so good. Her stories of her father were always affectionate and plentiful. Bess was a “daddy’s girl”, being the only girl in the family for nineteen years.

I know much more about Harry than I do about Jane, thanks to an interview of family members by one of my cousins. In reading Bess’s journals and remembering her stories of him, he seems to have been a strict but fun loving parent with some unorthodox child rearing methods.

She told of him insisting that she and her brother settle a difference between them by getting into their homemade boxing ring and duke it out. Harry had trained all his children to box including his daughter due to the rough neighbourhood in which they lived. Bess was astounded when she knocked out her brother, Ted. That feistiness would come to the fore eighty years later when Bess confronted an intruder in her home.

She described her Dad as her hero and on his passing March 13, 1955 she wrote:

Both her parents liked their drink and there were some extended family brouhahas as her uncles joined in with much shouting and a few punches thrown as a result. 

At the age of ninety-one she recalled that one of her mother’s sisters was good to her “when things were battling at home”.

Bess’s mother, Martha Jane Elcocks was born in 1877, the youngest in a family of ten children. She had eight sisters and one brother. Jane’s father was William Elcocks and her mother was Martha Bellingham.

Among Bess’s papers was an almost complete newspaper clipping from the Daily Montreal Star dated May 27, 1924. It led me to discover, through research of the micro-film copy of that newspaper, that at the age of twenty-seven, with two young children of her own and only having lived nine months in Canada, she wrote a letter to the editor on the subject of mothers and daughters.

It said in part:

“Being a reader of your mail for some time and always interested in letters to you, I will try to express myself in reference to articles written on mothers. That dear name! How many, I wonder, know what that name means. Some refer in your mail to good and bad mothers. Let me say: Keep the flag flying to the first and lower it to the second, and let those who have the first mentioned mother hold tightly, cherish, honor, love, obey and in heaven’s name, be worthy of her no matter whether they are girl or boy, woman or man.

How many realize the full value of what they have? But I wonder if some of those people who have “The One Mother” with whom I wish we were all blessed with, understand the untold suffering, misery and hardship that the children of the other mother have.

Do they realize that many, many pleasures, however small, would be forfeited if they were the other unhappy creatures who wonder sometimes why they were born at all? Do they know how many a heart aches to have the “One Mother”? ……..The ones who have “The Mother” sometimes do not appreciate her, and the mother who doesn’t care a rap may have the best of children and not appreciate them. I wonder why?

How can anyone having had a good mother understand the inward suffering, heartache, the cloud that shuts out all sunshine, the coldness, the loneliness that fills the life of some of their less favored sisters and brothers?”

The letter goes on, I believe, to speak further to her relationship with her mother especially around the time of Bess’s own marriage.

Bess and her husband Harry made their only recorded return visit to Birmingham in September of 1954. In a letter written in 1988 she mentions that she was glad she managed to see her father during that visit, which was about six months before he died.

According to the England & Wales Death Index, her mother Jane’s death was registered between October and December 1961. There is some uncertainty as I found only one reference to her death in Bess’s papers, where the date is listed as April 24, 1958.  A copy of the death record will be needed to confirm the correct date.

ELIZABETH JEANETTE BLANEY – THE EARLY YEARS

While Elizabeth (Bess) was not the first member of the Blaney family to leave Birmingham for Canada, she is the central figure of my family history.

Her parents were Harry Blaney (1876-1955) and Martha Jane Elcocks (1877-1961). They were married July 9, 1895 in Birmingham, England. According to their Entry of Marriage document, Harry was a house painter at the time. His father is shown as Edwin Blaney, a saddler (deceased) and Jane’s father was William Elcocks, a brewer. 

Elizabeth was born on Upper Ryland Road, February 23, 1897. This was a poor and tough working class area of Birmingham. Her grandmother and an aunt lived at the top of the hill.

Birmingham was the 2^nd largest city in Britain. It was a dirty and crowded industrial city. Ryland Road was an area of “back to back” housing; high density clusters of very small attached houses, built back to back and surrounding a communal courtyard. It was crowded and dark. Since three of the four walls were shared with other houses the lack of windows resulted in poor ventilation as well as low light. It was a harsh environment for poor working class families; disease and malnutrition were common

In the 1901 census, Elizabeth, her parents and her two brothers are shown still living on Ryland Road with Harry working as a general labourer in a lumber yard. The house contained only three rooms and the toilet facilities were likely outside and shared with the neighbours. 

Elizabeth was the second child of Harry and Jane, her older brother William was a little more than a year older than her having been born on January 9, 1896.

    

In the next nine years Elizabeth was followed by three more brothers, Edwin (Ted) born August 19, 1900, Albert born September 4, 1904 and Stanley born January 16, 1906. Her mother had many unsuccessful pregnancies as well, once telling her great-granddaughter-in-law there were twenty-two confinements in all. Infant mortality was high in Birmingham in those times. There is no official record of stillborn births until 1927 which limits research in this area. Perhaps more information could be found in the parish records.

Young Elizabeth had a few adventures. While attending Bristol Street School, she used a slate board and slate pencil. She “carried 4-5 stitches between my nose bridge and left eye where my slate broke up as I fell up the wide steps to the school door”. She also remembered how they used to salute the Union Jack before entering the school “it kept us proud”. In re-visiting the site in 1954 she “closed my eyes and expected to see Miss Coomes looking down at me from the balcony”.

Elizabeth also told of climbing the bridge on Pritchatt’s Lane, slipping and falling into the canal below, where a barge man pulled her out with a long hook. She ended up 2 days later in the Fever Hospital. (This was likely the Birmingham City Infectious Hospital, which handled scarlet fever cases) She told of "going up The Cut (canal) in a coal boat". 

A happier memory involved the annual Lord Chamberlain’s children's summer party at Highcroft where he received them in his wheelchair with an orchid in his coat. "All the children had a bag of candy and an orchid from his greenhouses to take home to their mothers, after a tea party and a tour around his beautiful rose gardens."

Very early in her life, as the only daughter, Elizabeth had a lot of responsibilities including many of the household chores and helping to raise her younger brothers. Likely her mother was indisposed much of the time and there was very little money, although Harry always worked hard at a wide variety of jobs to look after his family.

Church was always present in Elizabeth’s life, beginning in Sunday school at All Saints Church nearby. Throughout her life she sang and participated in the local church wherever she resided.

                                                                                                             

Just a year before Elizabeth left home to be married, Harry and Jane had another daughter, Martha Louise who was born in Birmingham on February 28, 1915. The birth of a son Alfred, born in Birmingham on January 1, 1920 completed the family.

www.nationaltrust.org.uk/birmingham-back-to-backs