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Richard Weeks
Richard's link to an African Heritage is through his Barbadian grandfather, a blacksmith who came to Hull in 1917. He speaks about his father's remarkable war years and then later when Fred Weeks (his father) in partnership with his uncle (Harry Weeks) became entrepreneurs who developed the Weeks trailers that became used around the world. Richard recollects his childhood and early adulthood which changed immeasurably when both his father and uncle died prematurely. He talks about making up a personal history that was entirely untrue until it was revealed to him at the age of twenty one that he had Black ancestry. His story captures three generations of his family.
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Transcription: Richard Weeks Interview
Interview with Richard Weeks
Interviewer: Jerome Whittingham
Producer: Gifty Burrows
Date: 11 January 2017
JW: So first and foremost, can you introduce yourself to the people that are listening?
RW: Yes, I'm Richard Weeks. I was born in Cottingham in 1963.
JW: Tell me, what is your connection then to the continent of Africa?
RW: Well it turns out my grandfather, who came over in the turn of that last century from Barbados. We know... I know personally very little about him, - but he came over as a single - single man I know who lived somewhere off Holderness Road for a while. He had three sons, one who died quite young, or I think as a teenager. - But his other two sons went on to create - a large industrial business in Hull.
JW: So what was your grandfather's name?
RW: Nathaniel Weeks. I've tried to track him down. I've been over there to try and track him down and so has my cousin, but we've all failed. We've nailed it down to three birth certificates. But apparently there was a fire in Barbados, so many records around that period are missing. So all we know is that he was born around 1872, I think was the date he gave.
JW: Have you been able to pin down a town or anything like that?
RW: No, no, we've got three names, I've got three names on the list that could possibly be him, but there could have been three or four more destroyed. So I've chosen to sort of leave that as a ... Well in fact when I was in Barbados, the people in the records office said, 'I think you need to call it a day!'
JW: Really?
RW: Really, because I had got as far as I could get and the rest would have been, speculation.
JW: So no idea of what trade or whatever your grandfather was involved with?
RW: The records show him as sort of joiner/blacksmith. I think one of my, one of the census records show 'blacksmith' and then that would make sense with my father and his brother going into engineering. So again I've tended to choose the sort of 'blacksmith' as the tick box.
JW: So your father was born in - the West Indies as well or?
RW: No, no, my father was... So Nathaniel came over, as I say, around the turn of the century. My father was born in 1918. Yes, so missed the war. We don't know what happened to Nathaniel in the war, he'd have been in his late thirt... or late, in his forties.
JW: Were there any sort of oral histories passed down the family?
RW: Not on my side of the family. Nathaniel did spend his latter years with my cousin's side of the family. So there's, my father's Fred Weeks and the other side of the family was Harry Weeks, who they still live over in Kirk Ella, Willerby side of town. So we were in Cottingham, they were over there and I think Harry was a little bit younger, and he had a son, a long, a much older son than me. And he, I think, they looked after Nathaniel in his later years. So they know more about him as an individual ... although only two photographs exist of him that we know of.
JW: Oh, right have you seen those photographs?
RW: Yes, so I've got copies of those two, yeah.
JW: Can you describe him to us then?
RW: Small, small and dark! But, I mean, the question has always been, the question, the reason I contacted this, was why would...I mean my wife's family are in the fishing industry and I sort of know quite a lot about Hull as a port and it really didn't attract people from the West Indies. There was no real trade from Hull to the West Indies. So why does one man...family oral history says he was part of a very large family and left just to try and make a living. So how did he end up in Hull? That's my biggest question. And what was it like for him to be living in Hull? The census records show him living with a, with a white family on Holderness Road. But he must have stood out like a sore thumb! Pre-First World War, walking around Hull, very limited trade...I don't know. It's always fascinated me.
JW: Are there any other avenues research-wise here in Hull that you can take to find out more?
RW: A few years ago I did spend some time trying to track it down, but no I'm just hoping something, part of this, part of... talking to my cousin because I haven't spent a lot of time with that side of the family, even though we were, grew up 10 miles apart. We, we don't, we haven't really got to the bottom of it. So hopefully talking to him and having had Nathaniel living in his house, we should be able to fill in some of the gaps in.
JW: Let's chat more about you. Yeah, what were your earliest memories?
RW: Of growing up around here? Well, I was very lucky because by the time I was born my father had become very successful. - So he was a larger than life character, seemed to know anybody and everybody. - He was a time-served apprentice so he took his, - so his engineering business it was as more about his engineering as it was about money and success. Everything was... We had a drawing board in the kitchen and it was always striving to be better and better and better, and make better products. And I was always taught the importance of everybody in the business, from the guy sweeping up to the guy running everything, was everybody was important and it was very much a team effort. So, yeah it was a very happy family type business. I mean it was 6-7 days a week, as I say, drawing board in the kitchen. But it was a very privileged lifestyle in, by that time, by 1963.
Trouble with the unions, I do remember that. I do remember being in my father's office and then suddenly seeing the men walking out and I know , I found out from some, the local MP at the time (who I know), that he says that the unions were very, very vicious. I mean we, we turned out to be one of the largest employers in Hull at that time and they were very much targeting it. And so it made that sort of family, family business, I do remember the conflict and people saying to me, 'Well Mr.Weeks, we don't really want to do this, but...' So there was a union element that had got through the door and was pulling back the business, was holding it back, for what gain, I don't know. But you'd have to talk to other business men in Hull from the 60s, really to understand what the motive was. But yes, it had started with, I mean my father had many of the same men that had started with him on Oxford Street in 1945, so yeah, it was, it was a nice place.
JW: So you were always destined to work in the family business, were you?
RW: So I was lead to believe!
JW: So you were lead to believe, but... Tell me about school life, what was school life like? Which school did you go to at junior and middle school?
RW: Well, as I say, I was, we were very lucky. So I was sent to Froebel House on the Avenues, which is still there. - Very scary!
JW: Why, why scary?
RW: It was run by a woman, who you could only describe as Victorian! If you know anyone else who was there at that time. She was very vicious, very scary. I still can't walk down a train... You weren't allowed to, it was a very, very small building. I mean now look, then it was huge, but now it's very, very small, it's just a Victorian house. The golden rule, I'll never forget, is you were not allowed to walk between a conversation. So if she was talking to someone and you walked... so there'd be 60 people having to go from the top floor to the bottom floor, and every single person had to go, 'Excuse me Miss. Dales' and if you didn't, she'd hit you round the back of the head, whether you fell down the stairs or not! So I still find myself on the trains going down to London, walking between people on the train, going 'Excuse me!', and ducking, 'cos I duck automatically to avoid a hand! (Laughter) And it's not just me, I've met loads of people that were at Froebel and they all say the same thing; 'Gosh, she could hit hard!' So yes, that was an unusual school - very strict, very Victorian, as I say that's the only way that you could describe it. - Pens, pens, quill, - dipping into the ink. Yeah, and learning to write absolutely perfectly.
JW: Would you say that you shined at school?
RW: You didn't have any option! So yes, so yes I was very studious.
JW: Were your, sort of, favourite subjects more science based or humanities?
RW: Yes, Yes! Yeah, no, I still can't write to save my life! So I then went on to St Olave's in York as a boarder at the age of eight. Which I think was my parents' way of showing that they'd got somewhere. It was sort of a big step. My sister had gone to boarding school, having said that she was five years ahead of me. So she'd already been to boarding school, but I was , I was keen to go because it sounded like good fun when you're seven years old! - But yes, so I was packed off there aged 7/8 and just delivered to yet another Victorian house.
JW: So keen to go though, but that must have been quite a wrench to be taken away from your parents?
RW: I don't know, I don't really know... I, because my sister had been at boarding school, and told me all these stories and I think you'll find if you talk to anyone, they're just lead to believe that it's one big adventure. You have to eat quickly because the food goes, as if it was all piled in a trough or something! But, building dens, and 'Oh, you'll love it!' and ' A friend of mine's brother goes there.' and.... So Yeah, it was just a big adventure, that's how I saw it. So I turned up at school - aged, yeah, as I say, about eight, and was put in a room with 10 or 12 other boys, some who cried, some who didn't. - But it was that first dormitory that I remember, so everybody's fishing... Some people have come from miles away, some people were... their parents were in the forces, they might have been the other side of the world, Shell, the likes of that, the oil industries... And that was the first time the colour of my skin ever got brought up. The lights go out, he's fishing for information, you don't have to make eye contact with people, the lights have gone out. You, there's 11, 12, 13 of you in a room, pitch black and everybody starts to then try and bond and find something out about everybody else. - And that was the... I don't know, I think I'd been reading something and the question came up, 'Why are you dark?', I mean eight year olds don't mince their words do they? They just say straight. I didn't think there was anything different, but the reality was, I just, someone said, 'Why are you darker?', 'Why are you darker?' It was a persistent question in the dark and it happens every night for the next 10 weeks, if you don't answer it, it crops up every night. That's the downside of that sort of environment. And I'd read somewhere about there were a lot of dark coloured people in Cornwall, possibly, and it was sort of... the article, had lead me to believe that they'd come washed ashore from the Armada, they were Spanish. And I know we'd been to Spain a few times. So I just put that out, I said, 'Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, so we're part of the Spanish Armada' or something… and that sort of accounted for my olive skin.
JW: So had, so had the conversation never taken place at home up until that time?
RW: No, no, not at all. Was it the first time that I was ever aware? No, yes, no... - We used to have, my father had, by the time I went to school, or around that time, had opened up a business in Africa and he used to go to the Nairobi Show - every October, for about three or four weeks. - And we went once or twice. So he had a business foothold in Africa and, and it was, it was sort of obvious it worked for him. We had a lot of - dark coloured people coming to stay from all over the world. They, I mean in those days you stayed in people's houses rather than in hotels. So I've had some sort of very - nice experiences of people staying, but - Yes, but equally, my school was full of farmers, there were a lot of farmers and I'd grown up with farmers and they don't mince their words. And there was always a feeling that my father was different, they'd always refer to him... but he was a larger than life character and that seemed to, that was the dilemma I've always had that was, how much did he not tell me? How much did he know? How much did he win over business? In post war Britain, how did he get away with it? Why was he so accepted? Was it because he had a bloody good product that they needed and they'd have to tolerate him? Because I mean it's still quite a racist community out there in rural Yorkshire or rural anywhere. Anybody different, whether you come from the next door village... So for Fred and Harry Weeks to be rocking up and sort of turning up on these farms in 1945, does, again is one of those questions I'd just love to know. I'd love to know how and what, what got them over the door all the time. So I remember these big booze ups at the Yorkshire Show. And oh... , big parties at home and all these farmers coming, who as I say, didn't mince their words. But they were happy to take the hospitality and pay for the products, so.
JW: So how much of a challenge did it feel to you to be questioned at eight years old?
RW: As soon as I'd found something to hang my hat on, it went away. That's, that's what I lived with for the next 20 odd years. I'd found the solution to a question. So different people, wherever I went, more people turned up years later at school and, 'What's he?', 'Why's he different to us?', I had my answer, I had my stock answer, which I'd made up in the middle of the night, just like that! But that worked for me, and it worked for me wherever I went, it worked for me at university, everywhere.
JW: When did you flip from giving the, the stock answer that you'd made up, to - to you know, knowing the truth and revealing that heritage?
RW: Well - so my father died when I was 12. - Which left this sort of huge sort of hole in my life. So then my family was really all female. My mother, her family were predominantly female, my sister and... that's not really relevant, but... it just never got addressed and from there on in. My mother had, I know, she'd had to be very brave to marry my father, who clearly was different. Post war Britain to marry my father. I'm told by some members of the family that her father, or I'm not even sure if her father was alive, but her family were not very keen on Fred Weeks because of his colour, but his, his character and that good old magic thing called money and success in post war Britain, made him stand out and was very quickly accepted. But he then had to be accepted by all the whole community and I think that character/success opens a lot of doors, or stops a lot of doors being slammed in your face, whichever the two may be.
JW: Do you remember any particular instances of racism against your dad?
RW: Not particularly no, no. But it was a different time, what would be defined as racist now, I mean yes I have had what would be defined as very racist comments made to me and vice versa but it was very different time and I’d got a thick skin – yeah, it’s making me think. I can’t really, I can’t put my finger on anything particular as I say. I suppose another advantage of being at school whether you were playing in a rugby match against somebody where, where people will always find something they call it sledging now where the opposition would always find something to, to dumb down the person on the opposite team but I was always supported by people behind me and I was so that so that you sort of, once you’d fitted into school then everyone supported you. So whether it’d be walking around York or wherever, I was always protected but also I was thick skinned and could always laugh it off. I mean I can think of situations in Hull with friends in Hull where I’d be just had to, people stand by you and you just have to laugh it off and just walk away.
JW: So I imagine your education was - not exactly diverse in the background of the students?
RW: I wouldn’t say it was, well in many ways it was probably more diverse than it was in Hull in the 70s had I gone to say Hymers or anywhere, I don’t know because there were people from all over the world. Not, not again by modern standards but by those standards there were people from Hong Kong and there were people from Africa, Nigeria so yeah it was…but I was still definitely very much in the minority and after the 600 people I was quite clearly a minority of a handful.
JW: So exploring your heritage more, did that make you more proud of your background? Was it good to be different?
RW: Well it was a watershed moment in l think, I’m looking at somewhere around 1986. I’m sitting in – I’m sitting in London talking to my sister who’d come to stay with me, I was working in London, and she said, “Well didn’t you realise that your father was Black?”, “Well not really, no”, “Well you must have done. You look at the pictures, you lived with him”, ”Well yes, but yes but no”. And that was my moment that she told me, the first person in my family to actually tell me, to say that word and I was in my early 20s…
JW: Early 20s…
RW: And that really hit me hard. Because then I suddenly and I remember saying to her but my mother paid for me to go on a hockey tour to Barbados two years or a year earlier. Why didn’t she tell me? So I got asked to join the Durham university hockey tour to Barbados. It was incredibly well connected and incredibly well funded. And that was the year she was mayor and I had met Sir Roy, Sir Roy Marshall Vice Chancellor of Hull University so when she was Mayor there was an Honoury Degree Ceremony and I ended up sitting next to him because I wasn’t going to, I was the Mayor’s Mayoress, or the mayor’s consort, we never did get to the bottom of that. But because I was the Mayoress I was sat next to Sir Roy and he said to me I was from Barbados, Bajan lawyer or whatever the Governor General . I said, “I’m going there this summer”. He said, “Well you need to look up this person, you need to look up my daughter she’s working out there at a hotel. And he gave me so much information over this boring lunch. And he was fantastic. Then I went to see him in Lockington where he gave me all the proper names and addresses of all the people I should go and see. So, my mother was paying for me to go to Barbados in my, with my, with access to everybody or anybody I wanted access to and she knew that and she was very proud of me. And she said, “Oh, Sir Roy helping Richard and he’s going here going to see the Ambassador and we had dinner with the Governor in his house. I had access to absolutely everything, completely oblivious.
JW: So why…
RW: I don’t know…
JW: Why didn’t she tell you?
RW: Well I asked my sister the other night. I said why. So my mother had to. In the 50’s had to put up with the conflict of marrying a dark man that was different. She had to go through all that, they had to run a business, go to all the functions, they couldn’t hide away or more to the point, my father didn’t hide away. So he did all the Masonic stuff, chairman of the Engineering society all these; He was just larger than life. They went through all that and then 10years after he’d died, I get a chance to go to Barbados and dig up my heritage and I never got told. And I still don’t understand that. But I didn’t rush home and ask my mother, I asked my sister but I never discussed it with my mother.
JW: Has your sister explored more than you?
RW: No she’s very much a move forward type of person. I spoke to her the other week when this, this came up just to see what she’d said. The only thing she did say, there was only one argument that she’d overheard which my father had turned around and just said, “But we’d gone this far, we’ve got this far and all that prejudice and racism. And now you’re telling me that there’s something wrong with me”. So they’d just had a full blown fall out. And that was the only time she said she’d heard it mentioned.
JW: So was it sort of the elephant in the room? Had there been, had there been a sort of upsetting past that had been worked through and it was never to be talked about again?
RW: I have no idea. As I say I’m the youngest really. My cousin Paul is about the same age but as I say key to it all is Victor Weeks who is substantially older and sort of is the bridge because Harry Weeks died. He was probably in the mid 70s so the two Weeks brothers were long gone by 1977 you see so the history suddenly sort of stopped then and the rest of it was rumour.
JW: So your family business ultimately had a lot to do with Africa? Had you travelled out there yourself then very much?
RW: I’m intrigued to know how the link with Africa came about. Whether the Nairobi show was – just the foothold into… my father’s memories he said, “Oh I started to look back to exporting”. But I know he took a step … and he seemed to know a lot of people and I’m just wondering if it was an ex-pat thing after the war. I’m sure we had a relation who flew aeroplanes out in Africa and maybe just Kenya and Nairobi just attracted him from one family member. I know he then, his agent in Africa was just somebody from the Hull region.
So they just then started a business of flat packing trailers which I know I’ve got some pictures of. So they’d make these flat pack agricultural trailers into such a way as they could be loaded onto ships and transported to Africa where his creativeness turned them into … I know there was a huge market into refuse one, just keeping rubbish and dirt and things, moving waste – which is part of a hygienic city. So it was all things like that. He was creative with what he could see, what the need was and I know that whenever I’ve been on holiday including Barbados I know I’ve seen a Weeks trailer.
So yes, the link to Africa I don’t know. It seem to come naturally but he had a foothold there. There was a big agricultural show there which I did go to.
JW: So what did your role become in the family business?
RW: It, unfortunately I went to university to study Agricultural Engineering – but with nobody in the family running it and the two, two power house dying in quick succession, it then got passed on to people that weren’t really up to the job so it closed in, I would say about 1983.
JW: Tell me about changes you’ve noticed in the city of Hull in the time that you’ve been living here?
RW: Well I did drop out of Hull probably in the 80s - 90s I was living. Well, I had a foothold in Hull, in Beverley – so when my father died we moved to Bishop Burton, moved in my view moved us from the outskirts of Hull to a more rural life which I sort of took to really well. There was Bishop Burton College on the doorstep and so I sort of became and having been to school with farmers, huge number of farmers, the business being in farming I sort of became a lot more rural than urban as it were. So my cousin I always think of lived in Kirk Ella and I lived in the countryside. So I’m East Yorkshire and he’s Hull whatever that says.
Yeah, huge difference. I do remember my father coming home once and complaining that he had some union around or some racial representative so if he was alive that would have had to be in the 70’s. And again that was…I’m not sure if this has been made up or made up in my own head or it’s just a story but I’m, I can picture in my head so my memories are what I remember. I memorise my father coming home and saying, “Bloody hell these bloody do-gooders from London, they come up here telling me that I have to employ so many people of ethnic minority, we don’t have any,” he said, I said to this guy, I said, “Who the hell do you want me to employ in Hull, there isn’t anyone else and anyway we do; the Managing Director and the Chairman – get out”. Now that’s been told too many times to be completely true but again I didn’t pick up on it. But I sort of noticed it and was quite proud of it but it just got brushed aside for years so that was experience that I put, well I know it has been in my head since I was younger, since I was very young but I put it to one side didn’t I from what I’m saying elsewhere. That conversation was just filed away and forgotten about for ease of life really.
JW: Most of the people we have spoken to so far have been – dwellers of the city centre really, you know within the boundaries of the city so your more rural experience is there sort of no diversity at all out there around Haltemprice and Howden sort of area?
RW: No. Poles -. I’ve been talking to a few farmers about that and yes – I mean sort of Beverley, Driffield. Yeah, I mean my friends from Beverley Driffield that part of the world and – no.
JW: And there hasn’t been any changes in the last sort of decade or so?
RW: Not particularly no, not that I’m aware of. It is what it is. You’d have to ask someone that lived in Driffield whether or not it was any different and how they feel. I, again I’ve probably only just been brought up and look it straight in the eye and bamboozle people.
JW: So does cultural diversity add value to an area or not?
RW: Well that’s different. I mean I’ve always been taught, especially my father’s point of view was just to just be able to talk to people on the shop floor and talk to people wherever they are and that’s how I see things. So what I’m saying is I’ve always felt that my family’s role whatever its ethnic diversity is is to fit in whether you’d be on, on a, in East Yorkshire talking to farmers, you’ve just got to change your accent, change what you saying. Shake hands harder, drink pints do whatever. Just fitting in that was very much part of my upbringing was learning how to be a chameleon. So whether you were sitting next to Sir Roy Strong at the top table of the university degree ceremony or down the pub at Kilham with a load of beaters after a shoot, you’ve got to fit in. Or you’re down on the floor with engineers, you’ve got to liaise with them, show them you can do the job as well as them. So no, there’s been no well as you can tell from what I’ve said, there’s no pressure to retain any cultural heritage which is now about 25%, we don’t even know about Nathaniel it may be down to 12%, we don’t know.
JW: Do you have children?
RW: Yes
JW: Are they interested in their sort of heritage?
RW: My eldest one is very, very much so – he’s doing a American Studies at university but that came about because of this, because he’s interested but just the way the A’Levels fell, he did 20th Century American Politics and 20th Century American history not deliberately, they just happen to be the A’Levels in the catchment. So he followed that and I think that’s pushed what he knows and the picture of Nathaniel in the sitting room has made him take a very big interest in that sort of thing so yes he’s very driven by that side.
JW: Has that inspired or motivated you to find out more?
RW: Yeah. As soon as I saw this on the TV I sort of scrambled and had to go to the iPlayer to watch it and find out the name of who to track down, yeah I responded pretty quickly, within 12 hours I think. So yes I’d had a broken ankle a few years ago and that had made me pull together the family history whilst I was laid up. I scanned a lot of documents, I tried to pull a lot of things together. But as I found out when I tried to talk to you lot actually what I had not done was that I’d scanned everything but had not put everything into chronological order so i didn’t know what my father had done in the war. He did two things in the war and I wasn’t sure which way round they were. Wasn’t sure which one of them came first so methodically while I was in plaster I just scanned everything. So yeah it’s been an interesting programme to get everything together in one straight line.
JW: You mentioned then about your dad’s activities during the war, what can you tell us about that?
RW: Right from what I have seen he did – interestingly he came top of his class in his apprenticeship at some Hull College. I’ve got a great big brass medallion but he got absolutely, A1 in absolutely everything so he excelled in engineering so he then went to, at the beginning of the war it appears that he went to, whether it was the war or he went there anyway but around that time, the beginning of the war, he went to Blackburn Aerospace which is, or was British Aerospace – which was an independent company in those days making planes and became a flight engineer or an engineer for them and got involved in something called the Blackburn B20 which was a one-off aeroplane built to combat the U-boats.
It was to get further; the aim was to get further out into the Atlantic to rescue downed seamen and also to get further out into the Atlantic to hunt for U-boats. And Blackburn had come up with this aeroplane that they thought was a winner rather than using the American version. So they built it in Hull, in Brough and its real test flight was in the Firth of Forth, Solway Firth I think – I’ve got plenty of documentation on this. So on its first full test flight, they had a top test pilot who would, has got an interesting career of his own. The top test pilot to fly the aeroplane, my father was the engineer representing Blackburns, they had an engineer representing the engine manufacturers and they had some other people from the MOD or the Airforce and the plane took off and basically got what they call ‘wind wobble’. It just wasn’t right and it started to vibrate and pulling off the power of the engines. It was doomed. It was flawed. At soon as it got up to full power, it started to fall to bits so the order was given to get out.
My father I know didn’t have his parachute and his notes said he got stuck under the chart table trying to find it and at 6ft 2, in a small aeroplane that was a bit of a crisis. So when he did eventually find the exit, I do remember him telling me, he opened, he stuck his head out of the hatch and saw one of the other guys hooked up on an aerial by his webbing because nobody had ever jumped out of it, nobody had ever thought of it. So my father managed to climb out, past this poor guy strapped to the side of the aeroplane, but he smashed his leg at the side of the aeroplane as well because it was just badly designed and I think two of them got out and the rest, two of them died. So he bailed out of that plane and he got his, he was very proud he got his Irvine, if you used a parachute during the war you got made a member of the Irvine Silk Caterpillar Club to represent the silkworm that made your parachute so he was very, very proud of that. And then it appears putting everything into chronological order that he then left Blackburns – at some point and joined, probably because of his smashed up leg from the aeroplane he joined the Royal Transport Auxillary who moved planes from A to B. They were the delivery drivers. They took damaged planes from Yorkshire to the west coast of Scotland to be repaird and bring new ones back and I’ve got his log book here and it’s fascinating. Yeah, he told me some very hairy stories so you take a plane that has been shot to bits and then you have to fly it to the safety of the west coast of England to be repaired and apparently they were going here there and everywhere, engines failing. They were very much undervalued really. Just get it there. If you fall out of the sky, you fall out of the sky.
JW: Terrifying career, probably worse than being on the front line…
RW: Yes, well they were the professionals you see so you’ve got, as I say the logbook is fascinating, everywhere you drive around Sherburn, Lisset you name it and sometimes it’s only just an hour. So if a plane had landed in the wrong place south of the river, he would bring it north of the river and vice versa. Sometimes flying 4 or 5 times a day…
JW: Fascinating…
RW: And the moment the war ended, from what we’ve found, he got into business instantly. They started buying up the aluminium I assume from the aircraft and making doll’s prams. Children’s prams; never seen one to scale but we assume toddler size, pushable about ones using the old aluminium and then the story goes they were…
Because of his work with this aeroplane and a lot of hydraulics on it and a lot of pressed steel, there was a huge amount of work on this Blackburn B20 to make it as light as possible so that it could fly as far as possible and make it more streamline and my father’s engineering in that made him, made sure he knew a lot about that, about pressed steel how to get strength and reduce weight and hydraulics.
And at the time farmers to load a trailer you’d had to manually pitchfork it on, then you’d have to manually pitch fork it off and given the opportunity at some point very, very quickly the army started to sell off lorries and wagons and they had axles, axels and bearing, very expensive commodities an axle. So they started buying those up on mass and making trailers to go behind the new tractors that had come out of the war and using hydraulics for the very first time. So he used his knowledge of hydraulics so that he could tip a trailer. And that was the bit, so the axles were war time axles, the rest of it was steel from the war, just generally a simple trailer half wood half steel but it tipped and that was the magic moment. And just clever bits, as I say saving weight by using the steel wisely instead of just lumping it all together and that was really the future of the business and it suddenly went on to make tens of thousands of trailers a year.
JW: I’m getting the impression that your father was a man that really loved challenges but really loved to turn them around. So just a final - question; what do you hope that people will take away with what you have just shared over the last half hour or so?
RW: I think that, if you look into the history and success that Hull should have. I took the children to the Wilberforce Museum ten or fifteen years ago and just thought it was a shame that there was no mention anywhere of these two brothers who had created this huge business from whatever their ethnic background was I just think it was, there was an area allocated, and I thought is was a shame and I always thought they deserved something. They must have fought adversity, they must have fought a lot and they pulled through it and that should be motivation for anybody. It was a public company, it employed hundreds of people they traded all over the world – and it was created by two people who just got on with it and they’d fought all that adversity and everything.
JW: Well you’ve certainly added to the record. Thank you very much Richard.
RW: Pleasure.
Interviewer: Jerome Whittingham
Producer: Gifty Burrows
Date: 11 January 2017
JW: So first and foremost, can you introduce yourself to the people that are listening?
RW: Yes, I'm Richard Weeks. I was born in Cottingham in 1963.
JW: Tell me, what is your connection then to the continent of Africa?
RW: Well it turns out my grandfather, who came over in the turn of that last century from Barbados. We know... I know personally very little about him, - but he came over as a single - single man I know who lived somewhere off Holderness Road for a while. He had three sons, one who died quite young, or I think as a teenager. - But his other two sons went on to create - a large industrial business in Hull.
JW: So what was your grandfather's name?
RW: Nathaniel Weeks. I've tried to track him down. I've been over there to try and track him down and so has my cousin, but we've all failed. We've nailed it down to three birth certificates. But apparently there was a fire in Barbados, so many records around that period are missing. So all we know is that he was born around 1872, I think was the date he gave.
JW: Have you been able to pin down a town or anything like that?
RW: No, no, we've got three names, I've got three names on the list that could possibly be him, but there could have been three or four more destroyed. So I've chosen to sort of leave that as a ... Well in fact when I was in Barbados, the people in the records office said, 'I think you need to call it a day!'
JW: Really?
RW: Really, because I had got as far as I could get and the rest would have been, speculation.
JW: So no idea of what trade or whatever your grandfather was involved with?
RW: The records show him as sort of joiner/blacksmith. I think one of my, one of the census records show 'blacksmith' and then that would make sense with my father and his brother going into engineering. So again I've tended to choose the sort of 'blacksmith' as the tick box.
JW: So your father was born in - the West Indies as well or?
RW: No, no, my father was... So Nathaniel came over, as I say, around the turn of the century. My father was born in 1918. Yes, so missed the war. We don't know what happened to Nathaniel in the war, he'd have been in his late thirt... or late, in his forties.
JW: Were there any sort of oral histories passed down the family?
RW: Not on my side of the family. Nathaniel did spend his latter years with my cousin's side of the family. So there's, my father's Fred Weeks and the other side of the family was Harry Weeks, who they still live over in Kirk Ella, Willerby side of town. So we were in Cottingham, they were over there and I think Harry was a little bit younger, and he had a son, a long, a much older son than me. And he, I think, they looked after Nathaniel in his later years. So they know more about him as an individual ... although only two photographs exist of him that we know of.
JW: Oh, right have you seen those photographs?
RW: Yes, so I've got copies of those two, yeah.
JW: Can you describe him to us then?
RW: Small, small and dark! But, I mean, the question has always been, the question, the reason I contacted this, was why would...I mean my wife's family are in the fishing industry and I sort of know quite a lot about Hull as a port and it really didn't attract people from the West Indies. There was no real trade from Hull to the West Indies. So why does one man...family oral history says he was part of a very large family and left just to try and make a living. So how did he end up in Hull? That's my biggest question. And what was it like for him to be living in Hull? The census records show him living with a, with a white family on Holderness Road. But he must have stood out like a sore thumb! Pre-First World War, walking around Hull, very limited trade...I don't know. It's always fascinated me.
JW: Are there any other avenues research-wise here in Hull that you can take to find out more?
RW: A few years ago I did spend some time trying to track it down, but no I'm just hoping something, part of this, part of... talking to my cousin because I haven't spent a lot of time with that side of the family, even though we were, grew up 10 miles apart. We, we don't, we haven't really got to the bottom of it. So hopefully talking to him and having had Nathaniel living in his house, we should be able to fill in some of the gaps in.
JW: Let's chat more about you. Yeah, what were your earliest memories?
RW: Of growing up around here? Well, I was very lucky because by the time I was born my father had become very successful. - So he was a larger than life character, seemed to know anybody and everybody. - He was a time-served apprentice so he took his, - so his engineering business it was as more about his engineering as it was about money and success. Everything was... We had a drawing board in the kitchen and it was always striving to be better and better and better, and make better products. And I was always taught the importance of everybody in the business, from the guy sweeping up to the guy running everything, was everybody was important and it was very much a team effort. So, yeah it was a very happy family type business. I mean it was 6-7 days a week, as I say, drawing board in the kitchen. But it was a very privileged lifestyle in, by that time, by 1963.
Trouble with the unions, I do remember that. I do remember being in my father's office and then suddenly seeing the men walking out and I know , I found out from some, the local MP at the time (who I know), that he says that the unions were very, very vicious. I mean we, we turned out to be one of the largest employers in Hull at that time and they were very much targeting it. And so it made that sort of family, family business, I do remember the conflict and people saying to me, 'Well Mr.Weeks, we don't really want to do this, but...' So there was a union element that had got through the door and was pulling back the business, was holding it back, for what gain, I don't know. But you'd have to talk to other business men in Hull from the 60s, really to understand what the motive was. But yes, it had started with, I mean my father had many of the same men that had started with him on Oxford Street in 1945, so yeah, it was, it was a nice place.
JW: So you were always destined to work in the family business, were you?
RW: So I was lead to believe!
JW: So you were lead to believe, but... Tell me about school life, what was school life like? Which school did you go to at junior and middle school?
RW: Well, as I say, I was, we were very lucky. So I was sent to Froebel House on the Avenues, which is still there. - Very scary!
JW: Why, why scary?
RW: It was run by a woman, who you could only describe as Victorian! If you know anyone else who was there at that time. She was very vicious, very scary. I still can't walk down a train... You weren't allowed to, it was a very, very small building. I mean now look, then it was huge, but now it's very, very small, it's just a Victorian house. The golden rule, I'll never forget, is you were not allowed to walk between a conversation. So if she was talking to someone and you walked... so there'd be 60 people having to go from the top floor to the bottom floor, and every single person had to go, 'Excuse me Miss. Dales' and if you didn't, she'd hit you round the back of the head, whether you fell down the stairs or not! So I still find myself on the trains going down to London, walking between people on the train, going 'Excuse me!', and ducking, 'cos I duck automatically to avoid a hand! (Laughter) And it's not just me, I've met loads of people that were at Froebel and they all say the same thing; 'Gosh, she could hit hard!' So yes, that was an unusual school - very strict, very Victorian, as I say that's the only way that you could describe it. - Pens, pens, quill, - dipping into the ink. Yeah, and learning to write absolutely perfectly.
JW: Would you say that you shined at school?
RW: You didn't have any option! So yes, so yes I was very studious.
JW: Were your, sort of, favourite subjects more science based or humanities?
RW: Yes, Yes! Yeah, no, I still can't write to save my life! So I then went on to St Olave's in York as a boarder at the age of eight. Which I think was my parents' way of showing that they'd got somewhere. It was sort of a big step. My sister had gone to boarding school, having said that she was five years ahead of me. So she'd already been to boarding school, but I was , I was keen to go because it sounded like good fun when you're seven years old! - But yes, so I was packed off there aged 7/8 and just delivered to yet another Victorian house.
JW: So keen to go though, but that must have been quite a wrench to be taken away from your parents?
RW: I don't know, I don't really know... I, because my sister had been at boarding school, and told me all these stories and I think you'll find if you talk to anyone, they're just lead to believe that it's one big adventure. You have to eat quickly because the food goes, as if it was all piled in a trough or something! But, building dens, and 'Oh, you'll love it!' and ' A friend of mine's brother goes there.' and.... So Yeah, it was just a big adventure, that's how I saw it. So I turned up at school - aged, yeah, as I say, about eight, and was put in a room with 10 or 12 other boys, some who cried, some who didn't. - But it was that first dormitory that I remember, so everybody's fishing... Some people have come from miles away, some people were... their parents were in the forces, they might have been the other side of the world, Shell, the likes of that, the oil industries... And that was the first time the colour of my skin ever got brought up. The lights go out, he's fishing for information, you don't have to make eye contact with people, the lights have gone out. You, there's 11, 12, 13 of you in a room, pitch black and everybody starts to then try and bond and find something out about everybody else. - And that was the... I don't know, I think I'd been reading something and the question came up, 'Why are you dark?', I mean eight year olds don't mince their words do they? They just say straight. I didn't think there was anything different, but the reality was, I just, someone said, 'Why are you darker?', 'Why are you darker?' It was a persistent question in the dark and it happens every night for the next 10 weeks, if you don't answer it, it crops up every night. That's the downside of that sort of environment. And I'd read somewhere about there were a lot of dark coloured people in Cornwall, possibly, and it was sort of... the article, had lead me to believe that they'd come washed ashore from the Armada, they were Spanish. And I know we'd been to Spain a few times. So I just put that out, I said, 'Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, so we're part of the Spanish Armada' or something… and that sort of accounted for my olive skin.
JW: So had, so had the conversation never taken place at home up until that time?
RW: No, no, not at all. Was it the first time that I was ever aware? No, yes, no... - We used to have, my father had, by the time I went to school, or around that time, had opened up a business in Africa and he used to go to the Nairobi Show - every October, for about three or four weeks. - And we went once or twice. So he had a business foothold in Africa and, and it was, it was sort of obvious it worked for him. We had a lot of - dark coloured people coming to stay from all over the world. They, I mean in those days you stayed in people's houses rather than in hotels. So I've had some sort of very - nice experiences of people staying, but - Yes, but equally, my school was full of farmers, there were a lot of farmers and I'd grown up with farmers and they don't mince their words. And there was always a feeling that my father was different, they'd always refer to him... but he was a larger than life character and that seemed to, that was the dilemma I've always had that was, how much did he not tell me? How much did he know? How much did he win over business? In post war Britain, how did he get away with it? Why was he so accepted? Was it because he had a bloody good product that they needed and they'd have to tolerate him? Because I mean it's still quite a racist community out there in rural Yorkshire or rural anywhere. Anybody different, whether you come from the next door village... So for Fred and Harry Weeks to be rocking up and sort of turning up on these farms in 1945, does, again is one of those questions I'd just love to know. I'd love to know how and what, what got them over the door all the time. So I remember these big booze ups at the Yorkshire Show. And oh... , big parties at home and all these farmers coming, who as I say, didn't mince their words. But they were happy to take the hospitality and pay for the products, so.
JW: So how much of a challenge did it feel to you to be questioned at eight years old?
RW: As soon as I'd found something to hang my hat on, it went away. That's, that's what I lived with for the next 20 odd years. I'd found the solution to a question. So different people, wherever I went, more people turned up years later at school and, 'What's he?', 'Why's he different to us?', I had my answer, I had my stock answer, which I'd made up in the middle of the night, just like that! But that worked for me, and it worked for me wherever I went, it worked for me at university, everywhere.
JW: When did you flip from giving the, the stock answer that you'd made up, to - to you know, knowing the truth and revealing that heritage?
RW: Well - so my father died when I was 12. - Which left this sort of huge sort of hole in my life. So then my family was really all female. My mother, her family were predominantly female, my sister and... that's not really relevant, but... it just never got addressed and from there on in. My mother had, I know, she'd had to be very brave to marry my father, who clearly was different. Post war Britain to marry my father. I'm told by some members of the family that her father, or I'm not even sure if her father was alive, but her family were not very keen on Fred Weeks because of his colour, but his, his character and that good old magic thing called money and success in post war Britain, made him stand out and was very quickly accepted. But he then had to be accepted by all the whole community and I think that character/success opens a lot of doors, or stops a lot of doors being slammed in your face, whichever the two may be.
JW: Do you remember any particular instances of racism against your dad?
RW: Not particularly no, no. But it was a different time, what would be defined as racist now, I mean yes I have had what would be defined as very racist comments made to me and vice versa but it was very different time and I’d got a thick skin – yeah, it’s making me think. I can’t really, I can’t put my finger on anything particular as I say. I suppose another advantage of being at school whether you were playing in a rugby match against somebody where, where people will always find something they call it sledging now where the opposition would always find something to, to dumb down the person on the opposite team but I was always supported by people behind me and I was so that so that you sort of, once you’d fitted into school then everyone supported you. So whether it’d be walking around York or wherever, I was always protected but also I was thick skinned and could always laugh it off. I mean I can think of situations in Hull with friends in Hull where I’d be just had to, people stand by you and you just have to laugh it off and just walk away.
JW: So I imagine your education was - not exactly diverse in the background of the students?
RW: I wouldn’t say it was, well in many ways it was probably more diverse than it was in Hull in the 70s had I gone to say Hymers or anywhere, I don’t know because there were people from all over the world. Not, not again by modern standards but by those standards there were people from Hong Kong and there were people from Africa, Nigeria so yeah it was…but I was still definitely very much in the minority and after the 600 people I was quite clearly a minority of a handful.
JW: So exploring your heritage more, did that make you more proud of your background? Was it good to be different?
RW: Well it was a watershed moment in l think, I’m looking at somewhere around 1986. I’m sitting in – I’m sitting in London talking to my sister who’d come to stay with me, I was working in London, and she said, “Well didn’t you realise that your father was Black?”, “Well not really, no”, “Well you must have done. You look at the pictures, you lived with him”, ”Well yes, but yes but no”. And that was my moment that she told me, the first person in my family to actually tell me, to say that word and I was in my early 20s…
JW: Early 20s…
RW: And that really hit me hard. Because then I suddenly and I remember saying to her but my mother paid for me to go on a hockey tour to Barbados two years or a year earlier. Why didn’t she tell me? So I got asked to join the Durham university hockey tour to Barbados. It was incredibly well connected and incredibly well funded. And that was the year she was mayor and I had met Sir Roy, Sir Roy Marshall Vice Chancellor of Hull University so when she was Mayor there was an Honoury Degree Ceremony and I ended up sitting next to him because I wasn’t going to, I was the Mayor’s Mayoress, or the mayor’s consort, we never did get to the bottom of that. But because I was the Mayoress I was sat next to Sir Roy and he said to me I was from Barbados, Bajan lawyer or whatever the Governor General . I said, “I’m going there this summer”. He said, “Well you need to look up this person, you need to look up my daughter she’s working out there at a hotel. And he gave me so much information over this boring lunch. And he was fantastic. Then I went to see him in Lockington where he gave me all the proper names and addresses of all the people I should go and see. So, my mother was paying for me to go to Barbados in my, with my, with access to everybody or anybody I wanted access to and she knew that and she was very proud of me. And she said, “Oh, Sir Roy helping Richard and he’s going here going to see the Ambassador and we had dinner with the Governor in his house. I had access to absolutely everything, completely oblivious.
JW: So why…
RW: I don’t know…
JW: Why didn’t she tell you?
RW: Well I asked my sister the other night. I said why. So my mother had to. In the 50’s had to put up with the conflict of marrying a dark man that was different. She had to go through all that, they had to run a business, go to all the functions, they couldn’t hide away or more to the point, my father didn’t hide away. So he did all the Masonic stuff, chairman of the Engineering society all these; He was just larger than life. They went through all that and then 10years after he’d died, I get a chance to go to Barbados and dig up my heritage and I never got told. And I still don’t understand that. But I didn’t rush home and ask my mother, I asked my sister but I never discussed it with my mother.
JW: Has your sister explored more than you?
RW: No she’s very much a move forward type of person. I spoke to her the other week when this, this came up just to see what she’d said. The only thing she did say, there was only one argument that she’d overheard which my father had turned around and just said, “But we’d gone this far, we’ve got this far and all that prejudice and racism. And now you’re telling me that there’s something wrong with me”. So they’d just had a full blown fall out. And that was the only time she said she’d heard it mentioned.
JW: So was it sort of the elephant in the room? Had there been, had there been a sort of upsetting past that had been worked through and it was never to be talked about again?
RW: I have no idea. As I say I’m the youngest really. My cousin Paul is about the same age but as I say key to it all is Victor Weeks who is substantially older and sort of is the bridge because Harry Weeks died. He was probably in the mid 70s so the two Weeks brothers were long gone by 1977 you see so the history suddenly sort of stopped then and the rest of it was rumour.
JW: So your family business ultimately had a lot to do with Africa? Had you travelled out there yourself then very much?
RW: I’m intrigued to know how the link with Africa came about. Whether the Nairobi show was – just the foothold into… my father’s memories he said, “Oh I started to look back to exporting”. But I know he took a step … and he seemed to know a lot of people and I’m just wondering if it was an ex-pat thing after the war. I’m sure we had a relation who flew aeroplanes out in Africa and maybe just Kenya and Nairobi just attracted him from one family member. I know he then, his agent in Africa was just somebody from the Hull region.
So they just then started a business of flat packing trailers which I know I’ve got some pictures of. So they’d make these flat pack agricultural trailers into such a way as they could be loaded onto ships and transported to Africa where his creativeness turned them into … I know there was a huge market into refuse one, just keeping rubbish and dirt and things, moving waste – which is part of a hygienic city. So it was all things like that. He was creative with what he could see, what the need was and I know that whenever I’ve been on holiday including Barbados I know I’ve seen a Weeks trailer.
So yes, the link to Africa I don’t know. It seem to come naturally but he had a foothold there. There was a big agricultural show there which I did go to.
JW: So what did your role become in the family business?
RW: It, unfortunately I went to university to study Agricultural Engineering – but with nobody in the family running it and the two, two power house dying in quick succession, it then got passed on to people that weren’t really up to the job so it closed in, I would say about 1983.
JW: Tell me about changes you’ve noticed in the city of Hull in the time that you’ve been living here?
RW: Well I did drop out of Hull probably in the 80s - 90s I was living. Well, I had a foothold in Hull, in Beverley – so when my father died we moved to Bishop Burton, moved in my view moved us from the outskirts of Hull to a more rural life which I sort of took to really well. There was Bishop Burton College on the doorstep and so I sort of became and having been to school with farmers, huge number of farmers, the business being in farming I sort of became a lot more rural than urban as it were. So my cousin I always think of lived in Kirk Ella and I lived in the countryside. So I’m East Yorkshire and he’s Hull whatever that says.
Yeah, huge difference. I do remember my father coming home once and complaining that he had some union around or some racial representative so if he was alive that would have had to be in the 70’s. And again that was…I’m not sure if this has been made up or made up in my own head or it’s just a story but I’m, I can picture in my head so my memories are what I remember. I memorise my father coming home and saying, “Bloody hell these bloody do-gooders from London, they come up here telling me that I have to employ so many people of ethnic minority, we don’t have any,” he said, I said to this guy, I said, “Who the hell do you want me to employ in Hull, there isn’t anyone else and anyway we do; the Managing Director and the Chairman – get out”. Now that’s been told too many times to be completely true but again I didn’t pick up on it. But I sort of noticed it and was quite proud of it but it just got brushed aside for years so that was experience that I put, well I know it has been in my head since I was younger, since I was very young but I put it to one side didn’t I from what I’m saying elsewhere. That conversation was just filed away and forgotten about for ease of life really.
JW: Most of the people we have spoken to so far have been – dwellers of the city centre really, you know within the boundaries of the city so your more rural experience is there sort of no diversity at all out there around Haltemprice and Howden sort of area?
RW: No. Poles -. I’ve been talking to a few farmers about that and yes – I mean sort of Beverley, Driffield. Yeah, I mean my friends from Beverley Driffield that part of the world and – no.
JW: And there hasn’t been any changes in the last sort of decade or so?
RW: Not particularly no, not that I’m aware of. It is what it is. You’d have to ask someone that lived in Driffield whether or not it was any different and how they feel. I, again I’ve probably only just been brought up and look it straight in the eye and bamboozle people.
JW: So does cultural diversity add value to an area or not?
RW: Well that’s different. I mean I’ve always been taught, especially my father’s point of view was just to just be able to talk to people on the shop floor and talk to people wherever they are and that’s how I see things. So what I’m saying is I’ve always felt that my family’s role whatever its ethnic diversity is is to fit in whether you’d be on, on a, in East Yorkshire talking to farmers, you’ve just got to change your accent, change what you saying. Shake hands harder, drink pints do whatever. Just fitting in that was very much part of my upbringing was learning how to be a chameleon. So whether you were sitting next to Sir Roy Strong at the top table of the university degree ceremony or down the pub at Kilham with a load of beaters after a shoot, you’ve got to fit in. Or you’re down on the floor with engineers, you’ve got to liaise with them, show them you can do the job as well as them. So no, there’s been no well as you can tell from what I’ve said, there’s no pressure to retain any cultural heritage which is now about 25%, we don’t even know about Nathaniel it may be down to 12%, we don’t know.
JW: Do you have children?
RW: Yes
JW: Are they interested in their sort of heritage?
RW: My eldest one is very, very much so – he’s doing a American Studies at university but that came about because of this, because he’s interested but just the way the A’Levels fell, he did 20th Century American Politics and 20th Century American history not deliberately, they just happen to be the A’Levels in the catchment. So he followed that and I think that’s pushed what he knows and the picture of Nathaniel in the sitting room has made him take a very big interest in that sort of thing so yes he’s very driven by that side.
JW: Has that inspired or motivated you to find out more?
RW: Yeah. As soon as I saw this on the TV I sort of scrambled and had to go to the iPlayer to watch it and find out the name of who to track down, yeah I responded pretty quickly, within 12 hours I think. So yes I’d had a broken ankle a few years ago and that had made me pull together the family history whilst I was laid up. I scanned a lot of documents, I tried to pull a lot of things together. But as I found out when I tried to talk to you lot actually what I had not done was that I’d scanned everything but had not put everything into chronological order so i didn’t know what my father had done in the war. He did two things in the war and I wasn’t sure which way round they were. Wasn’t sure which one of them came first so methodically while I was in plaster I just scanned everything. So yeah it’s been an interesting programme to get everything together in one straight line.
JW: You mentioned then about your dad’s activities during the war, what can you tell us about that?
RW: Right from what I have seen he did – interestingly he came top of his class in his apprenticeship at some Hull College. I’ve got a great big brass medallion but he got absolutely, A1 in absolutely everything so he excelled in engineering so he then went to, at the beginning of the war it appears that he went to, whether it was the war or he went there anyway but around that time, the beginning of the war, he went to Blackburn Aerospace which is, or was British Aerospace – which was an independent company in those days making planes and became a flight engineer or an engineer for them and got involved in something called the Blackburn B20 which was a one-off aeroplane built to combat the U-boats.
It was to get further; the aim was to get further out into the Atlantic to rescue downed seamen and also to get further out into the Atlantic to hunt for U-boats. And Blackburn had come up with this aeroplane that they thought was a winner rather than using the American version. So they built it in Hull, in Brough and its real test flight was in the Firth of Forth, Solway Firth I think – I’ve got plenty of documentation on this. So on its first full test flight, they had a top test pilot who would, has got an interesting career of his own. The top test pilot to fly the aeroplane, my father was the engineer representing Blackburns, they had an engineer representing the engine manufacturers and they had some other people from the MOD or the Airforce and the plane took off and basically got what they call ‘wind wobble’. It just wasn’t right and it started to vibrate and pulling off the power of the engines. It was doomed. It was flawed. At soon as it got up to full power, it started to fall to bits so the order was given to get out.
My father I know didn’t have his parachute and his notes said he got stuck under the chart table trying to find it and at 6ft 2, in a small aeroplane that was a bit of a crisis. So when he did eventually find the exit, I do remember him telling me, he opened, he stuck his head out of the hatch and saw one of the other guys hooked up on an aerial by his webbing because nobody had ever jumped out of it, nobody had ever thought of it. So my father managed to climb out, past this poor guy strapped to the side of the aeroplane, but he smashed his leg at the side of the aeroplane as well because it was just badly designed and I think two of them got out and the rest, two of them died. So he bailed out of that plane and he got his, he was very proud he got his Irvine, if you used a parachute during the war you got made a member of the Irvine Silk Caterpillar Club to represent the silkworm that made your parachute so he was very, very proud of that. And then it appears putting everything into chronological order that he then left Blackburns – at some point and joined, probably because of his smashed up leg from the aeroplane he joined the Royal Transport Auxillary who moved planes from A to B. They were the delivery drivers. They took damaged planes from Yorkshire to the west coast of Scotland to be repaird and bring new ones back and I’ve got his log book here and it’s fascinating. Yeah, he told me some very hairy stories so you take a plane that has been shot to bits and then you have to fly it to the safety of the west coast of England to be repaired and apparently they were going here there and everywhere, engines failing. They were very much undervalued really. Just get it there. If you fall out of the sky, you fall out of the sky.
JW: Terrifying career, probably worse than being on the front line…
RW: Yes, well they were the professionals you see so you’ve got, as I say the logbook is fascinating, everywhere you drive around Sherburn, Lisset you name it and sometimes it’s only just an hour. So if a plane had landed in the wrong place south of the river, he would bring it north of the river and vice versa. Sometimes flying 4 or 5 times a day…
JW: Fascinating…
RW: And the moment the war ended, from what we’ve found, he got into business instantly. They started buying up the aluminium I assume from the aircraft and making doll’s prams. Children’s prams; never seen one to scale but we assume toddler size, pushable about ones using the old aluminium and then the story goes they were…
Because of his work with this aeroplane and a lot of hydraulics on it and a lot of pressed steel, there was a huge amount of work on this Blackburn B20 to make it as light as possible so that it could fly as far as possible and make it more streamline and my father’s engineering in that made him, made sure he knew a lot about that, about pressed steel how to get strength and reduce weight and hydraulics.
And at the time farmers to load a trailer you’d had to manually pitchfork it on, then you’d have to manually pitch fork it off and given the opportunity at some point very, very quickly the army started to sell off lorries and wagons and they had axles, axels and bearing, very expensive commodities an axle. So they started buying those up on mass and making trailers to go behind the new tractors that had come out of the war and using hydraulics for the very first time. So he used his knowledge of hydraulics so that he could tip a trailer. And that was the bit, so the axles were war time axles, the rest of it was steel from the war, just generally a simple trailer half wood half steel but it tipped and that was the magic moment. And just clever bits, as I say saving weight by using the steel wisely instead of just lumping it all together and that was really the future of the business and it suddenly went on to make tens of thousands of trailers a year.
JW: I’m getting the impression that your father was a man that really loved challenges but really loved to turn them around. So just a final - question; what do you hope that people will take away with what you have just shared over the last half hour or so?
RW: I think that, if you look into the history and success that Hull should have. I took the children to the Wilberforce Museum ten or fifteen years ago and just thought it was a shame that there was no mention anywhere of these two brothers who had created this huge business from whatever their ethnic background was I just think it was, there was an area allocated, and I thought is was a shame and I always thought they deserved something. They must have fought adversity, they must have fought a lot and they pulled through it and that should be motivation for anybody. It was a public company, it employed hundreds of people they traded all over the world – and it was created by two people who just got on with it and they’d fought all that adversity and everything.
JW: Well you’ve certainly added to the record. Thank you very much Richard.
RW: Pleasure.