Biographies of James and Elizabeth Wilson

JAMES AND HANNAH MARY ELIZABETH WILSON (NEE HEATLEY)

James Wilson, second son of Thomas George Wilson and his wife Ada, was born on St. George’s Day, 23^rd April, 1898 at 14 Mary Street.  He was a pupil at Church Square School and badly wanted to go to sea like his father.  Unfortunately, his ambition was stymied by his headmaster, Mr. S. S. (“Gaffer”) Gunn, who advised Ada Wilson that her son was “far too clever for that” (!) and should be put to work in a commercial office at the earliest opportunity.

James began work as an articled clerk at Fortune’s accountancy practice in Church Street, where his youngest brother, Eric Wilson, would also work.  He was trained in book-keeping, typing and Pitman’s shorthand, also receiving private tuition paid for by his parents. James was also highly skilled in calligraphy, writing in “copperplate.”   At some point prior to the autumn of 1924 he changed employers, working first as a time-keeper and then as a clerk for the South Durham Steel & Iron Co. at what became known as their North Works.

Like his maternal uncle, Edgar Coates, Jim was a gifted, if self-taught linguist.  He became fluent in several languages, including Esperanto, and especially French – even to the distinction between the refined Parisian and harsher Marseilles accent.  In fact, he often worked as a translator at the steelworks, processing foreign orders or enquiries and giving foreign VIP’s a guided tour of the works.  In his politics James was an International Socialist, rabidly so, and also – in spite of having been brought up in the fold of the Wilson family’s Primitive Methodism – an atheist.

In addition he enjoyed natural history, botany, mathematics and geography.  His son, Jim Wilson, remarked that upon returning from foreign climes as an engineer-officer in the Merchant Navy, his father knew more about the places he’d been too than he did . . . and he’d been there!  James was also fascinated by the North American Plains Indians and by the history of the Zulu nation in their struggles against the Boers and the British.  In addition, he followed minority sports such as speed-skating and bicycle pursuit racing.  His great heroes were Cecil Rhodes, founder of Rhodesia, and Sir Clowdisley Shovell (who rose from cabin boy to Admiral only to be drowned when most of his squadron was wrecked due to navigational error in 1707).

Whilst most of his pursuits were intellectual, James could also be very practical, building his own kayak and growing a range of vegetables, fruits and flowers.  He was also a great one for walking.  During the bombardment he walked to Spennymoor to join the rest of the family, then staying with a relative.  He often hiked to Dalton-on-Tees, where his parents had a summerhouse.

During the Great War he witnessed the destruction of Zeppelin L.34, shot down in Tees Bay, and remembered how the streets were thronged with onlookers, gazing up into the night sky.  He was conscripted as a result in the 1916 “call up,” but rejected on medical grounds.  However, massive casualties forced a rethink and he was taken into the army, where his skill with a rifle earned him a recommendation for sniping duties. Thankfully, the war ended before his training was complete.  Consequently, he hiked home to West Hartlepool from the army depot at Seaham Harbour.  During the Second War James was a volunteer fire-watcher at his workplace and a member of the 18^th (Durham) Infantry battalion, Home Guard.

Taught to sail by a boat-owning friend, a great passion was to hire a fishing coble from Middleton and sail down the coast on weekend trips.  His niece, Maureen Jones (nee Wilson), described him as “a glamorous eccentric.”  His eccentricity extended to teaching himself to swim, practising his strokes while stretched out on a kitchen stool!

James Wilson married Hannah Elizabeth Heatley of Stockton-on-Tees at Stockton’s parish church on 18 September 1924.  Born on 21 November 1905, Elizabeth was the daughter of a shipyard foreman.  Her nickname was “Topsy,” after the fictional children’s character.  A former pupil of Stockton’s High School, she met James through her newly married sister, Iris Ivy, and her husband, who moved to the Hartlepools and knew James’s younger brothers, Edgar and Stan.

James and Elizabeth Wilson lived at the following addresses:

-          Penzance Street, briefly, when first married.

-          25 Ladysmith Street, a two-up, two-down street-house on the edge of the Longhill estate.

-          7 Elcho Street, where James built his kayak.

-          9 Henderson Grove, a semi-detached “council house” backing onto the Victoria Ground and looking onto the “Queen’s Rink” dancehall.

-          114 Raby Road – another council “semi” this house was built shortly after the Second World War.

Latterly, the couple moved in with their youngest daughter.

James and “Topsy” had four children, two boys and two girls.  The eldest boy was Jim Wilson, a biography of whom appears separately.

When war came Topsy was adamant that her children should not be evacuated.  “If we go,” she said, “We all go together.” Like so many others, the Wilsons had a standard-issue corrugated-iron Anderson shelter dug into their back garden.  A gap in the iron sheeting enabled those taking refuge to keep track of proceedings in the night sky.   With regard the night-time air-raids Jim Wilson remembered the throbbing drone that announced the arrival of German bombers overhead and of the long fingers of light probing skywards across the clouds in their quest to illuminate the enemy.  If caught in a searchlight beam, the enemy aircraft would appear ghostly and moth-like.  With a target to shoot at, the darkness would be punctuated by bursts of anti-aircraft fire whilst tracer bullets would be seen to float up from warships in the docks.  He described the crump and chatter of the guns, the banshee whistle of falling bombs and the earth-shaking noise of an explosion.  This last, he said, was “like the crack of bloody doom.”

James and Topsy’s children all had narrow escapes during the war:

-          In the early raids nothing could persuade June Wilson to go into the shelter.  She preferred to stay in the house, occupying a cupboard under the stairs.  During one raid a badly fused anti-aircraft shell exploded over the Wilsons’ house, blowing out windows and cracking walls.  After that, June joined the rest inside the shelter!  June worked a shaping machine operator at the Central Marine Engine Works during the war under the direction of Miss Winnie Sivewright, J.P., the daughter of a local naval architect.  June looked back at her war-work with pride and affection.  Hers was a wartime marriage, to William Fawley, who was stationed at West Hartlepool and served as a radar operator in the RAF.  The couple married at Christ Church on September 14^th, 1943.

 -           On his way home from study at night-school, Jim Wilson was astounded to find the pitch-blackness suddenly transformed by the intense, eerie light of a sputtering parachute flare used by bombers for “spotting” their targets.  No siren had sounded and the flare lit up a huge area, with Jim right in the middle of it.  Said Jim: “I’ve never felt so naked!”

 James Wilson himself had a very lucky escape.  Walking home from fire-watching duty in the early hours of August 27^th 1940, James and a fellow member of the works’ office staff were caught up in a German air raid as they walked along Church Street.  They discussed whether to shelter in the doorway of the Yorkshire Penny Bank but decided to press on.  Shortly afterwards, at 12.50 am, the properties adjoining the bank took a direct hit from bombs intended for the railway and were completely destroyed.  The bank itself was so badly damaged that it had to be demolished.

James Wilson retired from clerking at the steelworks in 1963.  Towards the end of his life he suffered from ill health, including glaucoma and cataracts that left him blind in one eye and partially sighted in the other.  He died of pneumonia, after a stroke paralysed his vocal chords and deprived him of his beloved linguistic abilities, in Hartlepool General Hospital on December 21^st, 1969.  His body was cremated and the ashes were scattered in the Garden of Remembrance at Stranton Grange Cemetery.  In terms of character and personality James Wilson was a stoic, but his son-in-law Bill Fawley said of him that: “He never said a bad word about anyone, and if he could help with anything, he would.”   Elizabeth Wilson also passed away at home, on Lady Day (March 25^th) 1974.

Source: “The Wilsons of Whitby and West Hartlepool,” Vol. 5.  See also images.

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